Sign Up For Newsletter Please fill in the following form: Pick from our range of designer children's clothes and accessories For any enquiries, please use the contact details below or view our FAQs Online EnquiriesMonday to Saturday: 9:00am - 9:00pmSunday: 11:00am - 6:00pm UK Landline: 0333 300 1000International/Mobile: +44 (0)20 3626 7020 In-store EnquiriesMon - Sat: 9:45am - 9:00pm Sun: 11:30am - 6:00pmT: +44 (0)20 7730 1234 Monday to Saturday: 10:00am - 9:00pmSunday: 11:30am* - 6:00pm *Browsing only between 11:30am and 12 noon , sign up below Submit your enquiry using the boxes below and add items to your favourites by clicking on the heart icon. My recently added itemsPlane debris that washed up on an Indian Ocean island is from a Boeing 777, Malaysian authorities said Friday, making it almost certainly the first piece of wreckage recovered from missing flight MH370.If confirmed by analysis of the debris, which will be flown to France on Saturday, the discovery would mark the first breakthrough in a case that has baffled aviation experts since the plane disappeared 16 months ago with 239 people on board.
Malaysian deputy transport minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said: 'I believe that we are moving closer to solving the mystery of MH370. This could be the convincing evidence that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean.' Meanwhile, experts said barnacles found on the wreckage could help pinpoint MH370's black boxes if indeed it has come from the doomed jet. Members of the French gendarmerie seal a wooden box containing the wing part that was washed up on a beach on La Reunion island before putting it into a van ready to be placed onto a flight to France Malaysian authorities have confirmed that this plane wreckage washed up on an Indian Ocean island was from a Boeing 777, meaning the part is almost certainly from missing flight MH370 The section of wreckage was carefully loaded onto a jet in La Reunion before it was transported to France French experts will attempt to match the debris, which was from a Boeing 777, to the doomed passenger jetRobin Beaman, a marine geologist at Australia's James Cook University, said it would be worth studying the crustaceans to gauge their age, which might indicate how long the fragment had been adrift and whether they are unique to a certain part of the ocean.
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, added: 'There's different barnacles in different parts of the ocean, so you might expect some CSI scenario where just by looking at the barnacles, you can pinpoint where it came from.'Oceanographer Arnold Gordon, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said the number of barnacles on the part are consistent with other debris he's seen which has been in the ocean for more than a year.'It's been 16 months from the crash and everything fits together,' he said. 'So I think the probability that it's from 370 is pretty high.' Investigators prepared to load a sea-encrusted wing fragment onto a plane bound for France to undergo further investigations to learn whether the aircraft remnant could help unlock the mystery of MH370 A white van carrying a wooden box containing the wing part that was washed up on a beach waits near a cargo hangar ready for it to be put onto a flight to France at the Roland Garros Airport in Sainte-MarieGordon said the discovery will give confidence to the ocean floor searchers that they are looking in the right area.
The Malaysia Airlines flight was one of only three Boeing 777s to have been involved in major incidents, along with the downing of MH17 over Ukraine last year and the Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco airport in 2013 that left three dead.The wing component found on the French island of La Reunion bears the part number '657-BB', according to photos of the debris, which matches the part for a wing flap in Boeing manufacturer's manual. 'From the part number, it is confirmed that it is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. This information is from MAS (Malaysia Airlines). They have informed me,' the minister told AFP. Experts claim barnacles found on the wreckage could help pinpoint MH370's black boxes if indeed it has come from the doomed jet because some species are unique to particular areas of the oceanMartin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the MH370 search, said greater clarity on the origin of the part should be confirmed 'within the next 24 hours'.'
We are increasingly confident that this debris is from MH370,' Dolan told AFP. Flight MH370 was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it mysteriously turned off course and vanished on March 8 last year.An Australian-led search has spent 16 months combing the southern Indian Ocean for the aircraft, but no confirmed physical evidence has ever been found, sparking wild conspiracy theories about the plane's fate.The fruitless search in January led Malaysian authorities to declare all on board were presumed dead. Speculation on the cause of the plane's disappearance has focused primarily on a possible mechanical or structural failure, a hijacking or terror plot, or rogue pilot action.The discovery of the piece of plane debris by a cleaning team on Wednesday sparked fevered speculation which was heightened with the discovery on the same rocky beach of a piece of torn luggage, a detergent bottle with Indonesian markings and a Chinese bottle of mineral water. The two-metre-long section of wreckage was discovered on the island of La Reunion, east of Madagascar, more than 3,800 miles away from where the aircraft was last seen, north of Kuala Lumpur and some 3,000 miles from the search area west of Australia Australian officials played down the discovery of the luggage saying it 'may just be rubbish'.
The wreckage is being sent to France for further analysis and is expected to arrive on Saturday. Scientists say there are several plausible scenarios in which ocean currents could have carried a piece of debris from the plane to the island.Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said while the part 'could be a very important piece of evidence' if it was linked to MH370, using reverse modelling to determine more precisely where the debris may have drifted from was 'almost impossible'.'After 16 months, the vagaries of the currents, reverse modelling is almost impossible,' Truss said.Australian search authorities, which are leading the hunt for the Boeing 777 aircraft in the Indian Ocean some 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) from La Reunion, said they were confident the main debris field was in the current search area.Dolan said the discovery of the debris, which experts said could be a flaperon from a Boeing 777 aircraft, did not mean other parts would start washing up on La Reunion or at nearby locations.'Over the last 16 or 17 months, any floating debris would have dispersed quite markedly across the Indian Ocean,' he said.