Plane debris to arrive in France Saturday morning: airport sources

Paris

The piece of wing found on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion will arrive in mainland France early Saturday for investigation, airport sources said.

The two-metre-long flaperon, which has raised hopes of solving the mystery of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, will leave the island at 9:15pm (1915 GMT) on Friday and arrive at Paris Orly airport at 06:20am (0420 GMT), the sources said.

It will then be transported to the southern city of Toulouse for investigators to pore over in the hope of proving the wreckage came from the doomed MH370.

Authorities have warned one small piece of plane debris was unlikely to completely clear up one of aviation's greatest puzzles.

The Malaysia Airlines plane, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, disappeared without trace in March last year with 239 people on board.

Officials have confirmed the debris comes from a Boeing 777 and only two others of this type are known to have crashed: one over Ukraine, the other at San Francisco airport.