Malaysia Air Flight 370 rumored to be found

Officials believe they may have found parts from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared during a flight from Malaysia to China last year, The Associated Press reports. 

Investigators, including representatives from the airplane’s manufacture Boeing, believe they have spotted debris that matches the missing plane near France’s Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.  

Malaysian officials are sending investigators of their own to the island to confirm if the debris is from the missing plane, according to the report. 

“Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can ever confirm that it is belonged to MH370,” the report said Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters on Wednesday.

The disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370 has baffled aviation experts and lawmakers in Washington for more than a year. 

The plane was last detected by air traffic controllers about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014. 

Officials from multiple nations have conducted a prolonged search for the plane since then, focusing first on the Gulf of Thailand and later on the southern Indian Ocean. 

Satellite images of potential debris in the water that officials believed could have been related to the missing plane raised officials’ hopes — falsely — of finding the aircraft’s remnants last spring.

The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew members at the time of its disappearance.

—This story was updated at 8:43 p.m.