SYDNEY — Media coverage of the search for the missing Flight MH370 is hurting ticket sales at Malaysia Airlines, said chief executive officer Christoph Mueller yesterday.

“Particularly pronounced” coverage of the search for MH370, which is thought to have crashed in the Indian Ocean off Australia’s western coast in March last year, “correlates unfortunately but very positively with our demand figures” in Australia, Mr Mueller told a conference in Sydney yesterday. “It is fuelled in most cases by social media hype.”

Later today, investigators in France will begin testing a wing part from a Boeing 777 — the same type as the missing plane — that was found on Reunion Island, a French territory east of Africa. If the part, known as a flaperon, is confirmed to be from Flight MH370, it will be the first physical remnant recovered from the aircraft. The Paris prosecutor’s office said a suitcase discovered near the part would also be studied.

“We have been always cooperating with the investigators since day one, and so do we today,” Mr Mueller said. He declined to comment further on Malaysia Airline’s involvement in the investigation in Paris or specify what assistance the carrier was providing.

Flight MH370 was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in March last year when it vanished without a trace with 239 people on board. By analysing satellite signals, investigators concluded the jet turned back over the Indian Ocean.

Reunion, where the debris was found last week, is a French overseas department roughly 3,700km from where Australia has led search efforts focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia. Ships using deep-sea sonar have already scanned more than 55,000 sq km of the seabed.

The debris is the strongest clue yet in a search that is now the longest-ever for a missing commercial jet.

Yesterday, an Australian newspaper reported that a local lawyer in Reunion, Mr Philippe Creissen, found two water bottles from Malaysia and a third from Taiwan that had washed ashore on the island. Mr Creissen said he handed the bottles to the police, and was later told that they had been passed to a Malaysian investigation team on the island.

Demand at Malaysia Airlines plunged last year after the disasters with Flight MH370 and Flight MH17, which crashed over Ukraine in July 2014 in an accident the United States and other countries attribute to a missile attack from pro-Russian separatists.

The company is now wholly owned by Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional, which took the carrier private in a RM1.38 billion (S$492.7 million) buyout and has committed to invest RM6 billion to restructure the airline.

The airline will restart under a new legal identity on Sept 1, Mr Mueller said yesterday. It will cut expenses to a level where the main carrier is competitive with low-cost rivals such as AirAsia, Singapore Airlines’ Scoot and Tigerair, he said.

“We will embark as a new carrier,” he said. It is “a complete reset of the system”. BLOOMBERG