Australia's deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said Thursday the discovery of plane wreckage at Reunion Island, east of Africa, was a "very important development" that might hopefully soon bring closure to the families of the 239 passengers on board flight MH370.
Truss, who is also the transport minister, said the debris appeared to be part of a Boeing 777 wing that, given its time in the water, had become encrusted in barnacles.
"The discovery of this wreckage, which photographs suggest could well be parts from a Boeing 777, has aroused considerable interest," Truss said in a doorstop interview in Port Macquarie.
"The first step now is to identify whether it is part of a Boeing 777 and then, secondly, whether it can be linked to MH370.
"This is obviously a very important development -- if indeed it is wreckage from MH370 -- because it could start to provide some closure for the families of those who were on board the plane."
MH370 was a scheduled Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing which disappeared in March last year.
It was carrying 239 passengers, most of those Chinese, though six Australians were also on board.
Truss said while Reunion Island was about 4,000km from the search site in the southern Indian Ocean, it was entirely possible that wreckage could have floated that far in the 16 months since the plane's disappearance.
"If this is a piece of MH370 wreckage, then it's been in the water for 16 months and a piece of wing this size (about two meters) could obviously have travelled a very long way," he said.
He said photographs of the wing, and barnacles, had been sent to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra for analysis. "We just want to see if anything useful can be learned from the barnacles in those pictures," he said.
Truss said positive identification of the debris as part of MH370 would provide "fresh impetus" to the Australian-led search off the coast of Perth. "We still believe that the aircraft is resting in waters in the Australian search area," he said.
La Reunion lies about 4,000km from the area considered the most likely impact zone.
Meanwhile, Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the seabed search in the southern Indian Ocean, said on Thursday he was encouraged by the find.
"It certainly looks like an aerofoil from a large aircraft," he said. "It is entirely possible that something could have drifted from our current search area to that island."
