Missing MH370: Wing part is from Boeing

Part of an aircraft wing that washed up on a beach on the French island of Reunion earlier this week is from the same plane model as the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said tests in France had made this link with the recently-discovered flaperon.

He tweeted: "The flaperon is officially identified as being part of a Boeing 777. This is verified by French authorities together with manufacturer Boeing,

"If more debris can be found it will aid the experts in the substantive analysis of what happened to the missing plane MH370."

He also noted that Malaysia is reaching out to several aviation authorities in territories near Reunion Island to help with the search for debris.

Flight MH370 was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 when it vanished with 239 people on board.

Aviation experts at a military base near Toulouse, France, have been trying to establish whether the wreckage is from the doomed flight.

Flaperons are control surfaces on the wing of an aircraft that help to stabilise the plane during low-speed flying during take-off and landing.

Suggestions that a door from the missing plane had also been found on a beach near the town of Saint-Denis were dismissed by Malaysian director general of civil aviation Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.

Mr Rahman, who is leading the analysis of the wing flap in France, said: "I checked with the Civil Aviation Authority, and people on the ground in Reunion, and it was just a domestic ladder."