After a 510-day wait, Danica Weeks faces another 24 hours before she can be sure if this is the MH370 breakthrough.

Her husband, New Zealander Paul Weeks, was one of 239 people on the plane when it vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

On Thursday, NZ time, wreckage was found on Reunion Island, off the east coast of Africa, raising the possibility it could be from the doomed plane. Malaysia has sent a team to verify the find while Australian investigators study photos sent through from French officials. By 10am Thursday (NZ time) investigators made the announcement there was near-certainty it was from a Boeing 777, the same make of plane as MH370.

Police carry the piece of debris found in the coastal area of Saint-Andre de la Reunion, in the east of the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. The two-metre-long piece of wing was later confirmed to be from MH370.

Weeks, who lives in Perth with her sons Lincoln and Jack, learned of the possible development through media reports and reporters on her doorstep at 6am.

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* MH370: The theories
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* Full coverage

"I've called the Australian authorities and, look, I'm just not ready to comment on anything yet, it's just too early to call. Until we know; there's been so many red herrings, the pings, the oil [slick], the debris on the west coast, [there's] just been so many that I'm not willing to speak about it until we know for sure that it's actually from the plane.

"I could say everything ... it could be that it could be this, that's what it's always been, so I just want to wait and see if it is a piece of a plane.

"We are good, me and the boys are good, just day-by-day that's how we take it, that's how we've got through for the last 510 days."

The large piece of aircraft wreckage that washed up on Reunion Island appears to come from a wing. Photo: Twitter

Weeks said she had been in contact with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

"They're hoping, fingers crossed, they think it'll be 24 hours to confirm or deny."

TOUGH QUESTIONS

Weeks later told the Daily Mail she could never fully answer questions her children were beginning to ask about their father.

"Lincoln's aware obviously it was a plane that daddy was on. He's 5 in September so he's obviously asking questions.

"I can't tell them. I'm not going to tell them until I do know because I'm not going to lie to them."

She said the discovery, if it was linked to the fatal flight, would be "a double-edged sword".

"On one side you still have minute hope they may be coming home which you hold onto with no evidence.

"On the other side, if it's a piece of a plane we might be able to solve the mystery and bring him home and do what's right for him."

Danica Weeks said that, if it was confirmed to be part of the plane, investigators would need to find the rest of the plane to solve the mystery. 

"We're probably still a long way, we need the rest of the plane, really, not just a flap."

Another New Zealander, Ximin Wang, 50, of Auckland, was also on the aircraft when it disappeared.

An Auckland-based relative of Wang said he did not want to talk about the latest discovery or the plane's disappearance.

Wang's nephew Ned Wang, who runs education consultancy New Bridge Education, said neither he nor his family wanted to talk publicly about MH370.

They were trying to move on from the incident, he said.

The 2-metre piece of wreckage appeared to be covered in barnacles, which would suggest it had been in the water for a long time.

If the part that washed up on Reunion did belong to the missing aircraft, it may give investigators some clue as to what happened, said Joe Hattley, a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

"It may be able to tell us something depending on the type of damage but in the scheme of things it's a small part," he said. "We really need to find the aircraft itself."

The part, which according to aviation experts may be a moving wing surface known as a "flaperon" situated close to the fuselage, usually contains markings or part numbers that should allow it to be traced to an individual aircaft, a source said.

There have been four serious accidents involving Boeing 777s. Only MH370 is believed to have crashed south of the equator, though an Australian-led search has so far concentrated on an area on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean. A search official said the latest find would not change the seabed search for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean.

THE QUESTION REMAINS - 'WHERE IS MY BROTHER?'

Sara Weeks, Paul Weeks' sister, said she felt "sick" when she learned of the news at her Christchurch home on Thursday morning.

Her emotions quickly became mixed as she digested the news, knowing the piece of wreckage could hold the key to discovering what led to her brother's death, but realising it could be another tumultuous period for the family.

Paul Weeks, one of two New Zealanders onboard MH370.

"The trouble is we don't know anything, it may or may not be part of the MH370 plane, it could be something else, we have got to wait until it's confirmed, I'm aware there is a serial number on this piece of wreckage and hopefully they should be able to check that out and get back to us very promptly with a yes or no and move on from there.

"The thing I was happiest about was that it's the French that have got it [the wreckage] and not Malaysia, because to be honest if they had it we'd never find out. They've just been incompetent. At least it's in the hands of someone else and we may get answers a little quicker."

"In most respects [I'm hopeful], at least if it's confirmed as a piece of the plane, then we can go on to the next stage which is still pretty similar to where we were before; what happened? Where's the rest of the plane? And where's my brother?

"There's not a day I don't think about, it, [it's] really difficult, hardest thing I've ever had to live through."

Danica Weeks, the widow of Paul Weeks, with their children Lincoln and Jack.

WING SIZE POINTS TO MH370

CNN correspondent David McKenzie told Radio New Zealand the wing appeared to be from a "larger plane" which increased the likelihood it was from MH370. 

Two other crashes in that region came to mind, he said. 

"One was in 2009 when a large passenger jet crashed off the Comoros Islands. That is relatively close to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Potentially it could have been from that plane.

"Then, much earlier, in 1995, there was the famous hijacking of an Ethiopian Airlines flight which crashed just north of the Grande Comore."

'IT LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE A 777'

Earlier, aviation lawyer and former Inspector General for the United States Department of Transportation Mary Schiavo told Radio NZ if the plane part was confirmed to have been from a Boeing 777 then it was almost certainly from MH370.

Boeing engineers would know almost immediately if it was from a 777, she said. 

"As soon as those people get on the ground, they will know."

Photographs of the part suggested a rate of deterioration that would match that of MH370, she said. 

RAPID DECOMPRESSION THEORY TO THE FORE

If it was to be identified as part of MH370, then the theory of rapid decompression was the most likely scenario, Schiavo said. 

"The rapid decompression scenario where they turned back to go back to the home base and then just kept going put the plane in an area between Australia and Madagascar and that's where the fuel starvation would have occurred."

SEARCH IS IN THE RIGHT PLACE

A leading oceanographer says confirmation that if a piece of the MH370 aircraft washed up on Reunion it would vindicate the location of the ongoing search for the missing jetline.

The search to solve what is so far one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries is focused on the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia.

It is believed to have cost more than $100 million since the aircraft carrying 239 people disappeared in March 2014.

If the wing piece indeed came from the flight, "that is consistent with where we think the plane went down", said David Griffin, oceanographer with CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, who heads the MH370 drift model task force.

"You would not use this information to revise the search on the sea floor," Griffin said.

Instead, it would "basically vindicate all the searching that has been done on the sea floor".

Griffin said the amount of mixing that occurs in the ocean meant that, after 16 months, the debris could be spread out over an area the size of Australia, "filling a large amount of the central and western Indian Ocean".

But the large number of variables - especially how much wind the debris is exposed to, whether there is variation between the wind and the currents, and variations in the surface and the currents themselves - meant a part turning up at Reunion could be "consistent with other locations (for the ocean floor debris) too".

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau which is co-ordinating the search, doubled the size of the search area in May from 60,000 square kilometres to 120,000 kilometres.

A part washing up at Reunion is "not inconsistent with what we know" from the bureau's modelling, the bureau's chief commissioner Martin Dolan said.

"It might even, possibly, get to Madagascar," Dolan said.

The search's holy grail remains the black box recorder, which Dolan said was "not designed to float" and was expected to be with the main debris site on the ocean floor.

"Obviously, we will work to understand just what this discovery might mean for the search.

"But it is unlikely to do much in terms of where we are looking or how we are looking," Dolan said.

"The main focus is on our vessels in the Indian Ocean that continue to conduct their search patterns in very challenging conditions."

The Reunion finding is also consistent with evidence from the University of NSW's Adrift project, which tracks the drift of buoys in the ocean by satellite.

Griffin said there was no real way of telling whether modelling for MH370 debris was "completely wrong" until it was proven right.

"It is the best we can do [but] there is no real data set to test this model because we don't put satellite trackers on bits of rubbish floating on the surface [which might move differently to the monitored buoys]," he said.

CURRENTS 'A BIG CONVEYER BELT GOING NORTH'

CNN's meteorologist Jennifer Gray told Radio NZ Indian Ocean currents - known as gyres - were discussed around the time the plane went missing and could explain the distance the debris has potentially travelled. 

"It's basically a big conveyer belt going north and around to the other side of the Indian Ocean," Gray said.

Rubbish from Japan's 2011 tsunami ended up in North America and Hawaii's North West Islands owing to a similar phenomenon.

"It ultimately carries things from one side of the ocean to the other," she said.

"But it's very complex, so it could take a very long time for something to end up on the coast of Madagascar."

- Stuff, Agencies