Spotlight: Experts gather in France to launch debris verification amid calls for realistic expectations

Experts from France and Malaysia are meeting in Paris ahead of the verification of suspected MH370 debris which will start Wednesday, with most adopting a wait-and-see approach.

Mauritius announced Monday that police will search for possible MH370 debris along its coast in response to Malaysia's request for help from territories near La Reunion Island.

Investigators from France and Malaysia met Monday afternoon to coordinate the investigation on the plane wreckage found last Wednesday on La Reunion Island, which was confirmed as a flaperon from a Boeing 777.

The meeting is aimed at outlining terms of judicial cooperation conducted under the aegis of the French justice, as the debris had been found on French territory and four of its nationals were among the 239 victims, according to French media reports.

"Malaysia and France share the concern and anxiety of all the next-of-kin in determining the origin of the flaperon in hopes of ending the 16-month painful wait for determinative news," Malaysia's civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said in a statement.

A piece of wreckage, reportedly discovered last Wednesday on La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, was officially identified as part of a plane wing known as a flaperon.

Transferred to Toulouse, France, the debris will undergo an examination by experts at the military-run General Directorate of Armaments (DGA) which will last for several weeks.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said Monday that information such as the manufacturing date and serial number will help the experts in the verification process, which will start Wednesday.

A legal process and protocols have to be followed before verification starts, he said, urging the public not to speculate as the new discovery has put stress on the victims' relatives.

China, Malaysia, France, the United States and airplane manufacturer Boeing will send representatives to participate in the verification, Liow said.

Some more debris including a suitcase and a metallic object, which was collected earlier on La Reunion Island, have not yet been identified as being related to the missing aircraft. The debris will be handed over to French authorities for verification, the minister said.

Some experts believe that the wreckage came from the missing Boeing 777, arguing the code "657 BB" found in the debris corresponds to a manual code in the aircraft.

However, Jean-Paul Troadec, ex-director of France's civil aviation safety bureau BEA, remains cautious over the analysis results.

"We should not expect miracles from this analysis," he said.

Generally, experts regard the possibility of locating the crash site based on the movement of ocean currents as highly unlikely.

David Gallo, director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said that the newly discovered debris cannot help narrow down the search area and it is nearly impossible to locate where the plane crashed with reverse engineering.

Luca Centurioni, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, the United States, also said that pinpointing the exact location of MH370's crash site based on the discovered debris is not realistic.

Even if the flaperon is identified as part of the missing flight, it would only confirm MH370 has crashed, he said.

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

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 aviation history. Endi