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Flight 370 wing flap expected to arrive at French site

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. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) 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. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

By Associated Press August 1, 2015 1 min read

BALMA, France (AP) – Representatives of the world’s media have gathered outside a French defense site in Balma, southwestern France, awaiting the arrival of a piece of plane wing that could be from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the 2-meter (6-foot) long piece of wing, putting it under police protection in the hours before it left the island of Reunion en route to the French military site east of Toulouse.

Reporters are being kept at bay Saturday outside the facility, where French aviation experts hope to confirm whether wreckage was part of the Boeing 777 which disappeared March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.