TimelineConfirmed3 Sep 2015 00:00 UTCDebris 2015–2017
Flaperon confirmed as 9M-MRO
3 September 2015
French authorities confirm the Réunion flaperon belongs to MH370. The disappearance is no longer a missing-aircraft case without wreckage.
On 3 September 2015 the French prosecutor’s office confirmed the Réunion flaperon was from 9M-MRO. This closed a class of hypotheses in which the aircraft had landed intact in Central Asia or elsewhere: a 777 flaperon does not drift from Kazakhstan to Réunion. It opened a debris-recovery phase along African and Mascarene coasts that would produce two more serial-number-confirmed parts and a larger set of “almost certain” and “likely” pieces.