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Last week, we covered news that debris washed up on Réunion island, 500 miles east of Madagascar, was suspected of belonging to MH370. That determination was made based on the fact that the piece of debris, called a flaperon, was identified as coming from a Boeing 777. MH370 is the only Boeing 777 to have been lost in or near the Indian Ocean, which made it effectively the only candidate. The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, has now stated that the flaperon has been “conclusively” linked to the missing airliner. While this does help answer some questions about where MH370 went down, it raises a host of new ones.

The research team working in France is performing an incredibly detailed analysis of the flaperon’s condition in the hopes of determining more about what happened to the aircraft. Microscopic analysis of the aluminum and the edges of the object could tell the team what sorts of stresses the flaperon was exposed to on impact. The fact that the remaining piece is fairly large points towards a slow impact event rather than an airliner dropping out of the sky. Slower, lower energy events tend to create larger debris, but the searchers hunting for MH370 over the past 15 months had initially discounted the possibility of a slow impact because no previous wreckage had been located.

A microscopic analysis of the wing fragment might yield up additional clues showing where the plane went down. Debris floating in the Pacific can be a haven for various micro-organisms, including algae. By analyzing the types of organisms that were growing on the flaperon, researchers may be able to gather clues as to where the flaperon entered the water as well as how long it took to wash up on Réunion island. A suitcase, found nearby the flaperon, is being analyzed separately for any clues it may shed on the matter.

The flaperon may shed light on what kind of stress the plane endured as it hit the ocean, but it’s unlikely to tell us much about the reason the aircraft failed in the first place. The only way to answer those questions will be to find the rest of the plane itself. The flight data recorders might still preserve vital information that would explain what went wrong on the flight, though the flight voice recorder may not do so (it’s only required to record the last two hours of a flight, not the entire continuous event).

Former NTSB Aviation Safety director, Tom Haueter told ABC that it looks as though the flaperon was deployed when the plane hit, which might suggest someone at the controls.

“To me, it indicates that it was not a high speed, high angle impact, because if that had happened, the leading edge would be crushed,” Haueter, an ABC News contributor, said. “What I don’t see is a severe nose-down impact.”

The condition of the debris suggests the flaps were down at the time of the crash, possibly indicating that “somebody’s controlling the aircraft,” when it hit the water, said Haueter. “The airplane wouldn’t have done that on its own,” he added. But “you’re trying to land or ditch the airplane – you’d have the flaps folded down.”

One of the common theories around MH370 is that the airplane suffered a loss of cabin pressure after takeoff and continued on a southerly course on autopilot. If this scenario occurred, then the crew and passengers would’ve likely been dead by the time the aircraft ran out of fuel above the Indian Ocean — the oxygen aboard a Boeing 777 can’t supply the entire airplane for the length of the flight. I don’t know enough about the autopilot capabilities of the aircraft to speak to whether or not a plane is capable of automatically descending when it detects that its fuel supply is running low, but modern aircraft have glide ratios of 17:1 or better, meaning the aircraft can travel 17 feet for every foot it loses in altitude. The last known radar contact from MH370 indicated a speed of 542 mph at 35,000 feet.

At present, the Australian government has no plans to shift its search area for the missing aircraft

Provided that the autopilot can at least keep the nose of the aircraft up and can continue running on available battery power, it suggests that MH370 flew until its fuel was exhausted. At this point, the aircraft’s electrical power would’ve failed, which should have been a signal for the ram air turbine (RAT) to kick on. The RAT generates electrical power from the movement of the aircraft through the air, and researchers already think it did engage. The timeline suggests that the aircraft successfully connected with the Inmarsat satellite network at 0:11 UTC, only to attempt a partial handshake at 0:19:29. This partial reconnect is believed to have been triggered when emergency power (possibly provided by the RAT) restarted the Satellite Data Unit, or SDU.

From that point forward, the plane was moving forward strictly on its own inertia. Assuming it ran out of fuel just before the SDU partial handshake attempt and that the autopilot can maintain trim on emergency power, it would’ve flown another 10-12 minutes before hitting the ocean. If the fuselage remained intact, it might have sunk quickly, with only a moderate amount of debris, and only objects like the flaperon, with air trapped inside an aluminum shell, would’ve had sufficient buoyancy to float.