Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Update: ‘White Object’ In Indian Ocean Could Be Part Of Wreckage

Additional debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was possibly spotted in the Indian Ocean Tuesday near Reunion Island.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Update

An Air France pilot was flying over the Indian Ocean when he spotted “a white object” floating roughly 43 miles from Reunion Island, said Siva Vadivelou, the assistant director of the French Civil Aviation Authority on the island, according to CNN.

It is believed that what the pilot reported seeing “must be a voluminous object” for him to have seen it from the altitude of 9,800 feet.

Hopeful that the object could belong to MH370, authorities sent a merchant ship to the area near the French island. The initial search of the area didn’t yield any findings. The French military will continue to search the area, according to Vadivelou.

Earlier this month, French authorities confirmed that the flaperon wing part that washed up on the shores of Reunion back in July was in fact from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the analysis made it “possible to say with certainty that the flaperon discovered on the Reunion Island on July 29, 2015 corresponds to the one on MH370.”

By finding and identifying the flaperon as a part of MH370, authorities were able to give closure to the families of the 239 people who perished aboard the ill-fated flight that took off on March 8, 2014. Investigators are still searching for the bulk of the plane, which is thought be somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean off the coast of western Australian.