Nearly two months after debris from the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 washed up on Réunion Island, a large object reportedly floating off the island has piqued the interest of French officials there, reports CNN.
An Air France pilot reported seeing "a white object" floating in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday morning about 70 kilometres (43 miles) northwest of the French island, said Siva Vadivelou, assistant director of the French Civil Aviation Authority on Réunion.
The Air France flight was at an altitude of 3,000 meters, or about 9,800 feet, the office of the island's prefect said. Because of the altitude, "it must be a voluminous object for the pilot to see it," Vadivelou said.
Authorities diverted a merchant ship to the area, but nothing was immediately found, according to the prefect's office. Reunion authorities have asked the French military to search the area Tuesday afternoon, the prefect's office said.
French investigators said this month that debris that washed up on the island in July - an airplane flaperon - was from MH370, a Boeing 777 that disappeared with 239 people aboard in March 2014 while on a flight scheduled from Malaysia to China.
Investigators believe the plane went down in the southeastern Indian Ocean, and searchers have been looking for the bulk of the plane at the bottom of the ocean off western Australia. Officials say Reunion is within the range of where debris from the missing plane could have drifted.