Oh boy! CNN's favorite airplane might have been found. Guess what they'll be talking about 26-hours a day?

Experts carry a piece of debris on La Reunion island, thought to belong to a Boeing 777. | Photo: AFP

Debris washed up on La Reunion island in the southern Indian Ocean is “almost certain” to belong to a Boeing 777 aircraft, Malaysia's deputy transport minister said on Thursday, and could hold clues over the disappearance of missing flight MH370.

Experts have been sent to the remote French island to determine whether the debris are from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which disappeared in March last year while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. 239 people were on board and the case has remained a mystery.

"It is almost certain that the flaperon is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. Our chief investigator here told me this,” Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said.

A damaged suitcase has also washed up in the same location as the airplane rubble, which investigators are now trying to verify is related to the other debris.

Malaysia Airlines, however, said it would be "premature" to speculate on the origin of the part, which is known to be a flaperon, a mix of a flap and an aileron.

"Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can further confirm whether it belongs to MH370," Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters in New York. "So we have dispatched a team to investigate on this issues and we hope that we can identify it as soon as possible," he said.

Yannick Pitou, a journalist from the island, located around 370 miles east of Madagascar, told BBC World Service that the pieces were sent to France for analysis.

Family members of those onboard the flight, who have not been traced, have expressed devastation over facing the reality that the part found of the plane means that their loved ones are most likely dead.

“All hope is truly gone now. I’m feeling very confused and emotional at the moment,” said Wang Zheng, an engineer in the southern Chinese city of Nanjing whose father and mother, Wang Linshi and Xiong Deming, were aboard the flight as part of a group of Chinese artists touring Malaysia.

"A part of me hopes that it is (MH370) so that I could have some closure and bury my husband properly but the other part of me says 'no, no, no' because there is still hope," the wife of the in-flight supervisor for the missing plane, Jaquita Gonzales, told the BBC.

Australia, who is leading the search, said that in spite of the discovery, their operation would not change. "We still believe that the aircraft is resting in waters in the Australian search area,” said Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, adding that there was “no change likely to strategy.”

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