World News for Students of English

03-08-2015 07:00

Could this unknown piece of material lead to answers? French investigators are looking into what appears to be debris from a plane that has washed up on Reunion Island.

Aviation experts have said the debris looks like a wing component from a 777 plane known as a flaperon.

It’s too early to suggest it may be from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. That flight is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean and has been missing since March last year. There have been other plane crashes much closer to Reunion, but flight MH370 is the only Boeing 777 to have disappeared in the area.

The Malaysian Airlines plane was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The journey should have taken six hours and lost connection with air traffic controllers mid-flight.

The two-metre-long piece of wreckage washed up on the island about 370 miles (595 kilometres) east of Madagascar. Malaysian officials have sent a team to the islandsto work alongside French air transport officials to examine whether the wreckage discovered is from the missing Malaysian Airlines flights. As time goes on, this piece of wreckage could help explain what happened in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.

Difficult words: debris (the broken parts of something), aviation (relating to aeroplanes).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com