continuing our breaking news coverage on the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. source close to the investigation tells rene marsh that boeing investigators have a high level of confidence that the debris, the piece found off the shore of reunion island, is from a boeing 777. that s because of a component number found on that piece of a plane. obviously means a lot. this is very emotional day then for the families of malaysia flight 370. our will ripley is in beijing. will, you have for a long time been speaking to the families and following kind of their journey for 16 months now. what do they say in light of this news? reporter: well, kate, i remember when you and i were together in kuala lumpur and the emotional outbursts we saw at the press briefings because families felt they weren t getting enough information. they were desperate for information.
this debris, there s a component number inside that flaperon that coincides with the part from a boeing 777. they believe with a high degree of certainty it is a 777 part. they want to see it in person, the verification process continuing, but a major development and a big step forward in trying to get answers for all of the families of mh-370. we re joined once again by aviation attorney and former military pilot justin green as well as cnn s safety analyst david soucie, a former faa accident investigators. justin, as we re looking at this breaking news again, you were saying to us in the commercial break that really everyone is going to rely on boeing investigators on the brains at boeing to confirm if they think this is their part or not. and the ntsb would have boeing as a party representative to the investigation, and boeing role is as the expert on this airplane is to help the investigators. so boeing is the people that s going to really decide not
decide but determine whether this part is the same if it is a boeing 777 part, when boeing says yes, how hard is it to make the leap from that to mh-370? i think they could try to match the serial number. whether that s possible i don t know, but clearly process of elimination. i think you have one missing part and you got one 777 part that s found. i think it s pretty clear it would have to be mh-370. now we have this piece of debris. authorities on reunion island are putting up helicopters in order to comb the coast to look for more debris. does this surprise you at this point that just a single piece of debris has been found, that other pieces of debris aren t nearby? does that tell you anything? you know, it s counterintuitive to think there wouldn t be parts everywhere right there in that location but if you really look at the distances traveled in doing the studies we ve done years and years ago back with the air france investigation even when