Workers search the beach for possible additional airplane debris. Photo / AP
Workers search the beach for possible additional airplane debris. Photo / AP
A plane door has reportedly been found washed up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Sky News reports it's not known if the door is from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 or if it's from a Boeing 777.
It has been discovered on a different area of the island where a two-metre wing part washed up days ago.
That part has now been arrived at a French laboratory for analysis to determine whether it is from MH370, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March last year with 239 people on board, including six Australians.
If confirmed as being from the missing plane, it would be the first breakthrough in a case that has baffled aviation experts for 16 months.
Malaysian and French experts will on Wednesday begin to analyse the wing part, as well as fragments of a suitcase discovered nearby.
'Plane seat' found months ago
Nicolas Ferrier barely gave the blue seat a second glance. As he carried out his daily patrol of the wild shores of Reunion, picking up debris from the jet black sands and giant boulders, it seemed to him like just another piece of rubbish - a bus seat, perhaps, or a hang glider's chair.
"It wasn't until Wednesday that it hit me what it could have been," said Mr Ferrier, climbing off his BMX to speak to The Sunday Telegraph in the shade of a screwpine tree, overlooking the pounding surf. "It was probably part of that plane."
Mr Ferrier spotted the seat in early May. And yesterday he told his story for the first time - up until now, no one but his wife has known about the find.
It was, he explained, washed up on the mile-long stretch of coast which he monitors near Saint Andre, on the east of the Indian Ocean island. And last week the same stretch of coast was at the centre of the world's attention, after what is believed to be part of a Boeing 777 wing was washed ashore. Given that the only such plane to have crashed in the Southern Hemisphere is MH370 - the ill-fated flight that vanished in mysterious circumstances in March 2014 - it seems, at last, that the riddle could have been solved.
A piece of debris from an unidentified aircraft found in the coastal area of Reunion Island. Photo / AFP
An Australian-led search has spent 16 months combing the southern Indian Ocean for the aircraft, which is known to have inexplicably veered off-course from its designated route, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"This is the first positive sign that we have located part of that plane," said Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister.
On Saturday the suspected wing component arrived in Paris, having been flown from Reunion on an Air France flight on Friday night.
A man on Reunion Island holds up the remains of a suitcase washed up on shore. Photo / Linfo.re
Malaysian and French experts will begin their analysis on Wednesday, along with an examination of parts of a suitcase discovered nearby.
On Monday three French magistrates as well as a Malaysian legal representative and an official from France's civil aviation investigating authority will begin meeting, behind closed doors, in Paris.
"I believe that we are moving closer to solving the mystery of MH370," said Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, Malaysia's deputy transport minister. "This could be the convincing evidence that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean."
Yet Mr Ferrier had no idea of the significance of the object. Flotsam and jetsam washed up are part of his everyday life on the inhospitable beach, where nobody dares to enter the fierce waves and shark-infested waters.
"I found a couple of suitcases too, around the same time, full of things," he said, almost in passing.
What did you do with them?
"I burnt them," he said, pointing to the pile of ashes lying on the boulders. "That's my job. I collect rubbish, and burn it.
"I could have found many things that belonged to the plane, and burnt them, without realising."
He also saw the wing which washed up on Wednesday - although in May, the barnacles encrusting its side were still alive. By the time it washed ashore again this week, the crustaceans were dead.
"I sat on it. I was fishing for macabi (bonefish) and used it as a table. I really didn't pay it much attention - until I saw it on the news."
His story is backed up by that of another local woman, named only as Isabelle, who spotted the same object while walking on the beach in May, accompanied by her 10-year-old son.
"It was the beginning of the holidays - around May 10," she told local news website Zinfos974.com.
"I was walking with my son, Krishna. Then from a rock on which we were standing, he saw an object and shouted: 'Mum, that looks like the wing of a plane!'"
Krishna then jumped on what looked like a suitcase. He managed to prise it open, and then spotted another suitcase buried in the black sand.
But the waves were gathering height and so Isabelle ordered her son off the beach. They went home, and thought nothing of it until Wednesday.
Mr Ferrier has not told his tale until now because he has been in hospital for several days; yesterday (SAT) was his first day back at his home, 300 yards from the beach.
Why didn't he report the seat and suitcases at the time?
"I work alone, so didn't have anyone to consult about it - unlike the others," he said, referring to the team of beach cleaners led by Johnny Begue, who found the wing on Wednesday.
And the testimony of Mr Ferrier and Isabelle raises the question that hundreds of items could have been washing up on Reunion for the past few months, with no one paying any attention.
"Even now I can't quite understand it. For me, it was something totally normal - I see it all the time. I can't really say if it was the first time or the last time I saw bits like that, because I never pay attention.
Has he found any other interesting or unusual objects?
"Maybe," he said. "But I wouldn't know. I just throw them on the fire."
He doesn't listen to the radio or watch television, he said, and was unaware of the furore.
"Malaysia Airlines is a bit like bin Laden," he chuckled, his thickly-accented French mixed with Creole. "No one had ever heard of it - then suddenly we talk about nothing else."
And for Mr Ferrier and other islanders, the global spotlight has taken them aback.
Reunion, a sleepy volcanic outcrop 400 miles east of Madagascar, is unused to this attention. The 850,000 inhabitants live from agriculture - sugar cane plantations carpet over half the agricultural land on this 40-mile long island - and from tourism. Yet tourism has taken a battering following a wave of shark attacks: since 2011, there have been seven fatalities, with the most recent the death of a 13-year-old surfer in April. A man lost his arm in an attack a fortnight ago.
Unemployment remains a huge problem - the latest figures, from June, put the number out of work at three times that of mainland France, and even worst for young people, with 60 per cent jobless.
But the influx of £800 million in EU funds over the past seven years have visibly helped: the airport is gleaming, the motorways modern and the lush volcanic hillsides flanked with wind turbines.
Indeed, although Reunion may have its problems it is decidedly French and comparatively wealthy: locals complain about islanders from neighbouring Mayotte and Comoros arriving and living off the state. The currency is the euro, and Carrefour supermarkets sit between the pastel-hued houses with their modern corrugated-iron roofs. Lycra-clad pensioners pedal up the roads, or play petanque in the gravel areas in front of the palm-fringed beaches.
"I am Creole, I am Reunionnais, and I am French," said Franc Periamagom, 70, who had come to join Mr Ferrier in the shade. "We are a mix here: African, Indian, Malay, European."
The island was discovered, uninhabited, by the Portuguese in the early 1500s. It became French in 1642, and was for a while renamed Bonaparte Island - in honour of Napoleon - until the British briefly held it, from 1810 to 1815. Since then it has been known as Reunion, and remained in French hands.
Mr Periamagom, in a cowboy hat and white shirt, was convinced that the wreckage of the plane had washed up on his isle.
"They found two bottles on Friday," he said conspiratorially. "And they were definitely from the plane, because they were special drinking water given to pilots to keep them awake during long flights."
The two local police standing nearby smiled and rolled their eyes.
For the past four days the beach has been abuzz with activity; on Friday around a dozen police patrolled the beach, while helicopters hovered overhead. Local people took it upon themselves to fly drones over the waves, in the hope of spotting more debris.
Scientists say there are several plausible scenarios in which ocean currents could have carried a piece of debris from the plane to the island.
But Australian search authorities, who are leading the Indian Ocean hunt for the aircraft some 2,500 miles from Reunion, said they were confident the main debris field was in the current search area.
Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the search for the passenger jet, said the discovery did not mean other parts would start washing up on the island.
"Over the last 16 or 17 months, any floating debris would have dispersed quite markedly across the Indian Ocean," he said.
And by Saturday the beach was beginning to empty again.
"In the month of May, if I had realised, there would have been even more bits," said Mr Ferrier. "There was a lot of evidence on the beach. But the sea took it away.
"I think they'll find more though," he added.
"I've seen quite a lot - and I wasn't even looking."
- Daily Telegraph with additional reporting from AFP
