1st LD Writethru: Flaperon officially identified as from Boeing 777: Malaysian transport minister

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said Sunday that the flaperon discovered on Reunion Island has been officially identified as being part of a Boeing 777 aircraft, the same type of plane of the missing flight of Malaysia Airlines MH370.

This was verified by French authorities together with aircraft manufacturer Boeing, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB) and the Malaysian team comprising the Department of Civil Aviation, Malaysia Airlines, and Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team for MH370, he added in a statement.

Liow said Malaysia, the United States, China, France and Boeing will send representatives to participate in further verification of the flaperon in Toulouse on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Malaysia is seeking assistance from several aviation authorities in territories within the vicinity of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, he said, adding that "this is to allow the experts to conduct more substantive analysis should there be more debris coming on to land, providing us more clues to the missing aircraft."

Also on Sunday, debris of plane hatch was found on a beach of La Reunion after last week's discovery of a flaperon suspected of belonging to the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight on the shores of the Indian Ocean island, according to local sources.

The flight, a Boeing 777-200, was reported missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with a total of 239 passengers on board, most of them Chinese nationals.

So far, the plane has not been found despite a massive surface and underwater hunt, in what has become one of the biggest mysteries in the aviation history. Endi