Air safety investigators have said they have some confidence that debris found in the Indian Ocean which washed up on a Reunion Island beach this week is a wing component from the long missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The component has been identified as a "flaperon" from the trailing edge of a Boeing 777 wing, the AP reports. Because no other 777s are missing, if the piece is confirmed to be from such an aircraft, it would have most likely belonged to Flight 370, which vanished on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The discovery could confirm that the plane turned south into the Indian Ocean after vanishing from radar, which would put theories that it traveled north and landed somewhere after being hijacked to rest, and could help investigators figure out exactly how the plane crashed.

It is unclear however if the found wreckage would be able to help crews pinpoint the location of the rest of it, or the bodies of those who were on board.

If the part is from the flight, it would be the first debris found, after a massive multinational search of the southern Indian Ocean, the China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand all turned up with no trace of the aircraft.

Following the news, many took to social media to discuss the find, and while some expressed hope for the families of the victims and asked questions about it, some believed the discovery is a conspiracy theory to cover up political unrest in Malaysia.