La Dépêche media report
In the absence of any French speakers posting so far, I’ll offer a rough interpretation of the report in Friday’s La Dépêche. I stand to be corrected, but there are few surprises here. The burden of the journalist’s report seems to be as follows:
The investigators of the DGA Techniques Aéronautiques at Balma, near Toulouse, have finished their examination of the flaperon, at least for the time being.
There is no evidence to suggest that the flaperon is not from the MH370 aircraft.
In relation to the assumed crash area, its location was consistent with the ocean currents. The species of attached barnacles are found in the assumed crash region.
The reason that the deputy prosecutor had not committed himself on the origin of the flaperon was to avoid pre-empting the technical investigation, there always being a gulf between judicial proof and technical proof.
According to an anonymous expert, the flaperon would have floated some metres beneath the surface.
A former president of the BEA has opined that the flaperon cannot have experienced a violent impact with the ocean surface. From that, he seems to infer that neither did the aircraft itself. That would explain the absence of small debris.
A pilot-specialist at a news conference agrees, and opined that the aircraft ran out of fuel. He does not think it would have broken-up into numerous pieces of debris...
Only the FDR and CVR would explain what happened on board.
Caveat: My interpretation of the media report stands to be corrected.