A
woman (C), believed to be the relative of a passenger onboard Malaysia
Airlines flight MH370, cries as she talks on her mobile phone at the
Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, March 8, 2014. The
Malaysia Airlines Boeing B777-200 aircraft carrying 227 passengers and
12 crew lost contact with air traffic controllers early on Saturday en
route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the airline said in a statement.
"Two of our aircraft sighted two oil slicks around 15 to 20 kilometres (10-12 miles) long, running parallel, around 500 metres apart from each other," Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan told state-run VTV.
The sighting of the oil slicks is the first possible sign that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a twin-engine Boeing 777 jetliner, could have gone down in the waters between southern Vietnam and northern Malaysia.
"We are not certain where these two oil slicks may have come from so we have sent Vietnamese ships to the area," said Tuan, speaking live on Vietnamese television.
Malaysian
Prime Minister Najib Razak (C) arrives to meet family members of
missing passengers at the reception centre at Kuala Lumpur International
Airport on March 8, 2014. Rescuers from several nations mounted an air
and sea search on March 8 for a Malaysia Airlines jet that has gone
missing over Southeast Asia, with grave fears for the 239 people on
board.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Saturday that no sign had yet been found of a missing Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished from radar screens over the South China Sea with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board.
He said search operations in an area about midway between Malaysia and Vietnam's southern coast were being intensified.
Crash report
The Malaysia Airlines plane that went missing on Saturday morning with 239 people on board had crashed into waters off Vietnam's southern Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam's Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reported, quoting Rear Admiral Ngo Van Phat, political
commissar of the Fifth Naval Region, according to Xinhua news agency of China. (WAM)
In
this photo released by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Western
Command PIO, Filipino government troopers look at a map as they continue
the search for the missing plane of Malaysian Airlines at Antonio
Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan province after
conducting air search for the missing plane of Malaysian Airlines on
Saturday March 8, 2014. Search and rescue crews across Southeast Asia
scrambled to find a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared from
air traffic control screens over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam
early Saturday with 239 people aboard
Cont. reading.........
A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing over the South China Sea on Saturday, presumed crashed, as ships from countries closest to its flight path scoured a large search area for any wreckage.
Vietnamese state media, quoting a senior naval official, had reported that the Boeing 777-200ER flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had crashed off south Vietnam, but Malaysia's transport minister later denied any crash scene had been identified.
"We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane. We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed," Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein told reporters near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
"We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side," he said.
Vietnam's state-run Tuoi Tre news also quoted Admiral Ngo Van Phat as qualifying his earlier remarks about a crash site having been identified, saying he had been referring to a presumed crash site beneath the plane's flight path using information supplied by Malaysia.
A crash, if confirmed, would mark the U.S.-built Boeing 777-200ER airliner's deadliest incident since entering service 19 years ago.
The plane disappeared without giving a distress signal - a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours without issuing a distress call.
Vanished after reaching 35,000 feet
Flight MH370, operating a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said in a statement read to an earlier news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed the plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to an altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from the website's tracking records a minute later while it was still climbing.
Malaysia and Vietnam were conducting a joint search and rescue, he said but gave no details. China and the Philippines have sent ships to the South China Sea to help in any search and rescue.
"We are extremely worried," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing before the initial Vietnamese report that the plane had crashed. "The news is very disturbing. We hope everyone on the plane is safe."
The flight left Kuala Lumpur at 12.21 a.m. (1621 GMT Friday) but no trace had been found of the plane more than eight hours after it was due to land in the Chinese capital at 6.30 a.m. (2230 GMT Friday) the same day.
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