[Peetwo]

Excellent post Ventus and is where many Marine experts etc. seem to be now going; that is of course if the Flaperon proves to be from MH370. 

Example from the Oz article below:

"..Mr Truss said marine experts were examining shellfish and other marine life attached to the debris to advise on where they might have originated and how long they would take to grow.."

Couple more quotes (courtesy of Guardian live blog) from the Truss presser yesterday afternoon, where strangely Beaker was again noticeable in his absence.. :

15h ago16:33

Truss says photos of the wreckage suggest the debris could be the flaperon.
The photos are “not inconsistent with a Boeing 777”, he says, but there are other possibilities.

More investigation will be needed to verify that it is from a 777 and if so, which one.
He says the number on the part, BB670, could be a maintenance number. It is not a serial number, he says.

It is a “realistic possibility” that debris from where MH370 is thought to have crashed could have drifted as far as Réunion.

15h ago16:34

Truss says the investigation will take some time but the BB670 number could help to speed that up.

This is particularly stressful for the families of the people who lost their lives on MH370, he says.

He says the Australian authorities have been in touch with families affected.

16:36
The Réunion island is a French territory, Truss says, so France and Malaysia are leading on this aspect of the search. Australia, which leads the search in the waters closer to Australian territory, will continue to assist.

  15h ago16:37

Truss: 'We are treating this as a major lead'

..A piece of debris could have floated a very, very long way in 16 months and it is a very, very long way to the Reunion islands from where we think the aircraft entered the water.
Clearly we are treating this as a major lead...

IMO the following quote from Truss is extremely naïve...

"..Truss says he hopes some of the “wild” theories about the fate of the aircraft will be put to bed if this turns out to be a part of MH370, but he says it also won’t tell us much more about the plane’s location, beyond the fact it is in the Indian Ocean.." 

This is almost perfectly highlighted in today's Oz article:

MH370: ‘Gentle turn’ the key to mystery of missing airliner
by: BRENDAN NICHOLSON

• From: The Australian
  
• July 31, 2015 12:00AM
  

Defence Editor
Canberra

[*]

Search area Source: TheAustralian


[*]


Police stand next to a piece of debris on the island of La Reunion. Source: AFP 
 
Whoever was flying Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 when it disappeared in March last year made a gentle turn away from its planned course, possibly to avoid alerting passengers to the change of direction.  

As what might be the first piece of wreckage from the missing jet was found on a beach on the French-owned Indian Ocean island of Reunion, ­aviation sources told The Australian that after more than a year exhausting all other possibilities, investigators believed the plane could not have behaved as it did, and followed the course it travelled, without “human hands on the controls”.

[*]MH370 vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to ­Beijing on March 8, 2014. No distress signal or message was sent and all 239 passengers and crew on the Boeing 777 are presumed dead. The aircraft is believed to have made a radical change of course less than an hour after it took off and to have crashed in the ocean far off Western Australia six hours later.
[*]
Aircraft experts have said the large piece of debris found on Reunion appeared to be a control surface known as a “flaperon” from the back edge of a wing. They have confirmed that it closely resembled a part from a Boeing 777. Reports last night suggested a suitcase had also been washed up on Reunion but it was not clear whether it was from the missing plane.
[*]
Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Warren Truss said that if the wing section proved to be from MH370, that would be consistent with it drifting on currents for several thousand kilometres in 16 months from what was believed to be the crash site west of Australia.
[*]
Mr Truss said it was too early to say the wing section was from the missing aircraft. But it was the first real lead, he added.
[*]
“It certainly is an interesting discovery,” he said.
[*]
Mr Truss said marine experts were examining shellfish and other marine life attached to the debris to advise on where they might have originated and how long they would take to grow.

A search led by Australia has so far covered 55,000 square kilometres of ocean floor up to 4km down. The search could eventually cover 120,000 square kilometres and is expected to cost Australia up to $90 million. Australia has already spent $76m on the search.
[*]
In Beijing, anxious families of the 153 Chinese passengers on the doomed aircraft were nervously awaiting the official forensic ­investigation of the debris.
[*]
It is understood Chinese officials may have been sent to join the investigation. In a group statement, Chinese victims’ family members said they were desperate for information. Xu Jinghong, whose mother was on the flight, said families were sceptical each time an announcement about the plane was made.
[*]
“I find it hard to believe, it’s contradictory to investigations during the past year,” Mr Xu told The South China Morning Post.
[*]
The Australian has been told that, as it diverted from its course, the aircraft made a slow “half standard rate turn” which would have taken several minutes to swing it back over the Malay Peninsula. Then it headed southward to the ocean west of Australia.
[*]
A standard half-rate turn is a very gentle change of course and it would take several minutes to complete. Whoever was flying the aircraft could well have also turned off the system of moving maps viewed in the passenger cabin, an aviation source said.
[*]
“Aircraft just don’t turn their transponder and their ACARS system off and then make an ­actual turn in direction all at the same time without someone being at the controls,” a source told The Australian. “Somebody made that happen. The aviation community is convinced there was a human hand involved.”
[*]
ACARS, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, is a digital datalink system that transmits messages between aircraft and ground ­stations via radio or satellite.
[*]
“The systems were turned off and the aircraft then made a rate half turn across the Malay peninsula and joined the air route across the top of Sumatra and over the Indian Ocean,” a veteran aviator said. “Somebody either programmed that to happen or flew that course.

[*]Aircraft just don’t fly themselves. Somebody had to actually manoeuvre the aircraft and transponders don’t just stop transmitting.
[*]
“That was initiated by somebody and events then followed from there.”
[*]
The aircraft is believe to have flown on for six hours before it ran out of fuel, the engines flamed out and it crashed into the ocean.
[*]
Exhaustive examination of ocean currents by the investigators trying to find MH370 has confirmed that the wing section found on La Reunion could have drifted there from the apparent crash site off Western Australia.
[*]
The currents would have ­initially carried the section towards the Indonesian island of Sumatra and then circled out across the Indian Ocean.
[*]
Australian investigators say they hope to know within days if the debris is part of a Boeing 777. Mr Truss said the numbers BB670 found on the debris were not a serial number that could immediately identify the plane but could prove valuable if they were added during maintenance. ­Malaysia has sent an investigation team to Reunion.
[*]
A leading oceanographer who has helped in the search said the arrival of debris on Reunion ­Island was consistent with his own modelling of the likely drift from the crash site.
[*]
Charitha Pattiaratchi, professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia, produced a model last year showing the MH370 debris could have been carried by the Indian Ocean’s characteristic anticlockwise towards Madagascar, west of Reunion, within 18 months.
[*]
“The debris would have meandered, it would have gone around and round in swirls and eddies, and it would have taken some time to reach the west,” he said.
[*]
If the debris is confirmed to be part of a Boeing 777, that would rule out two other Indian Ocean crashes. Ethiopian Airlines flight 961, a Boeing 767, crashed into the Indian Ocean near the Comoro Islands in 1996, killing 125 of the 175 passengers and crew. The dead included three hijackers. South African Airways flight 295, a Boeing 747, crashed into the ­Indian Ocean east of Mauritius in 1987 after an in-flight fire, killing all on board.
[*]
Additional reporting: Scott Murdoch, Wang Yuanyuan, Victoria Laurie

[*]
Speculation & 'wild theories' will continue unabated while we are operating in an - Malaysian Government imposed - information vacuum...
MTF...P2