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Looks to me like a piece of a control surface, flap, spoiler, or maybe a winglet - although I don't think winglets have an airfoil but I might be wrong. Small parts are serialized but I think you'd have to identify a large structure from the numbers on the components inside it.

There is quite a bit of oil in the engines, but again that slick would have broken up quite quickly.

oohrah wrote: I'm not surprised at all. I used to fly a military jet in that part of the world. The radar and voice coverage is spotty once you get away from land. I've been between countries over water with no voice or navaids for hours. Unless you have satellite comm (and use it, which I read MH 370 did not subscribe to), you can disappear very easily, intentionally or not.

The ocean is a LARGE PLACE. I think U.S. airliners are required to have HF radios? Others maybe not?

KD5NRH wrote: So all the fuel and hydraulic connections between the wings and fuselage would somehow seal themselves up to prevent any sort of oil slick on the surface?

I think here I would go more with NTSB investigators than someone who has never set foot on a debris field. History is replete with video (film) of kamikaze aircraft hitting the water in near vertical dives - how fast? How fast would a 777 in a vertical dive be traveling? I think the professor has been watching cliff diving on TV too much.