Members of the French gendarmerie carry a wooden box containing the wing part that was washed up on a beach, as they maneuver it into a van ready to be put onto a flight to France, at the Roland Garros Airport in Sainte-Marie, on the north coast of the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, Friday, July 31, 2015. Investigators prepared to load a sea-encrusted wing fragment onto a plane bound for France on Friday, to undergo further investigations to learn whether the aircraft remnant could help unlock the mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. SAINT-ANDRE, Reunion – The wing fragment found on the French island of Reunion was wrapped and ready to be loaded Friday on a cargo flight for the mainland, where experts are hoping to unlock the mystery of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Several uniformed officers loaded a large wooden crate into a van that drove under police escort from the main wing of the Roland Garros airport to a separate hangar.
French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the 2-meter (6-foot) long piece of wing. If from the Malaysia Airlines jet missing for 16 months, the wreckage could have drifted thousands of kilometers (miles) across the Indian Ocean to this French island off the east coast of Africa.
Among the searchers scouring Reunion’s shoreline for debris on Friday was the man from the beach maintenance crew who first found the wing fragment.
It will take at least another day to learn whether the plane missing for 16 months crashed into the sea. Though several officials have expressed confidence that the debris found on the French island of Reunion is from a Boeing 777, French authorities are planning to send the piece to southern France for analysis.