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Indian Ocean Debris Believed To Come From Missing Flight MH370
McGruber writes that air crash investigators, though maintaining that it is "too early to tell" with certainty, have 'a high degree of confidence' that a piece of wreckage found on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion is from a Boeing 777 — the same model as the doomed MH370 which disappeared in March 2014. Investigators will need to examine closely the wreckage to link it to MH370, but MH370 was the only Boeing 777 ever lost over water.
I wouldn't be surprised if they could get some more specific clues on what water it's been in - for example, marine growth species types or isotopic ratios - to help pin it down better than just general drift calculations (lots of places could dump debris on Réunion). There are could also be potential clues on how much sun or what temperatures it's been exposed to, such as rates of plastic degradation, and perhaps that might also help give them better ideas of what areas it's been in based on weather patterns since the flight was lost.
There are so many potential clues... each one rather vague on its own, but all together, I imagine they'll get pointed in the right direction.
Also, I can kill you with my brain.
Right, but the wing itself doesn't...
Surely you jest. The inside of a wing is almost all empty space or fuel storage. The wing is not a solid piece of aluminum. It's full of sealed air pockets. The flaperon (as it was not the entire wing that they found) is just a small portion of the wing. It is very light and far less dense than water as it would not have any fuel storage, wiring, or other materials inside of it. Unless the outer shell was compromised across several of the inner compartments, it would float quite easily.
First, we know this is from the aircraft in question. How? It has been visually verified to be a part that is unique to a Boeing 777. The 777 has a remarkable safety record, with only one being lost at/over sea. Therefore, unless a shipload of 777 wing parts sank without Boeing's knowledge, this is from the incident airframe.
Second, we can now be certain of what was gleaned from the satellite data, that the crew flew the plane off course. How? The part washed-up from the Indian Ocean rather than the Pacific somewhere near China or Japan etc. This also tells us that whatever the famous oil rig worker saw, it had nothing to do with this flight.
Third, we can probably deduce that the part was separated from the rest of the airframe above the water or on a hard impact with the surface. Had this part been on the plane at the time of a "gentle" ditching, it likely would have been dragged to the bottom with the rest. Had this part (made of heavier-than-water materials) been dragged to the bottom, most of the air within it would have leaked out (these elements are not air-tight because if they were, they'd explode when planes climb to cruise altitude) and and any trapped air remaining would compress too much to provide buoyancy so it would not have risen to the surface to float around the ocean.