Search continues for missing airliner carrying 239 passengers

Malaysia and Vietnam launched searches today for a Malaysia Airlines jet that lost contact with traffic controllers, as fears mounted over the fate of the 239 people aboard.

A crying woman is escorted to a bus for relatives at the Beijing Airport after news of the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 plane on March 8, 2014. Malaysia Airlines said a flight carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing early on March 8, and the airline was notifying next of kin in a sign it expected the worst. AFPShow less

KUALA LUMPUR // Nearly 240 people were feared dead after a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared on Saturday.

Vietnamese air force planes on Saturday spotted two large oil slicks close to where the flight went missing earlier in the day, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people had crashed.

The air force planes were part of a multinational search operation launched after Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday morning.

The oil slicks were spotted late Saturday off the southern tip of Vietnam and were each between 10 kilometres and 15 kilometres long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement. There was no confirmation that the slicks were related to the missing plane, but the statement said they were consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the two fuel tanks of a crashed jetliner.

Two-thirds of the missing plane’s passengers were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots had sent a distress signal, suggesting that whatever happened to the plane occurred quickly and possibly catastrophically.

Asked whether terrorism was suspected, Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak said, “We are looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks.”

Foreign ministry officials in Italy and Austria said the names of two nationals from those countries listed on the flight’s manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand.

Italy’s foreign ministry said the Italian man who was listed as being a passenger, Luigi Maraldi, was travelling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane. It said he reported his passport stolen last August.

Austria’s foreign ministry confirmed that a name listed on the manifest matched an Austrian passport reported stolen two years ago in Thailand. It said the Austrian was not on the plane, but would not confirm the person’s identity.

At Beijing’s airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather at a nearby hotel to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service. A woman wept aboard the bus while saying on a mobile phone, “They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good.”

Relatives and friends of passengers were escorted into a private area at the hotel, but reporters were kept away. A man in a grey hooded sweatshirt later stormed out complaining about a lack of information. The man, who said he was a Beijing resident but declined to give his name, said he was anxious because his mother was on board the flight with a group of 10 tourists.

“We have been waiting for hours and there is still no verification,” he said.

The plane was last detected on radar at 1:30am around where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand, authorities in Malaysia and Vietnam said.

Lai Xuan Thanh, director of Vietnam’s civil aviation authority, said air traffic officials in the country never made contact with the plane.

The plane “lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam’s air traffic control,” Lt Gen Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement.

The South China Sea is a tense region with competing territorial claims that have led to several low-level conflicts, particularly between China and the Philippines. That antipathy briefly faded Saturday as China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia all sent ships and planes to the region.

Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak said that Malaysia had dispatched 15 planes and nine ships to the area, and that the US Navy was sending some planes as well. Singapore, China and Vietnam also were sending aircraft.

It’s not uncommon for it to take several days to find the wreckage of aircraft floating on the ocean. Locating and then recovering the flight data recorders, vital to any investigation, can take months or even years.

“In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues,” said Lt Gen Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military’s Western Command.

After the oil slick was spotted, the air search was suspended for the night and was to resume Sunday morning, while the sea search was continuing, Malaysia Airlines said.

The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. It said there were 152 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India, three from the US, and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.

* Associated Press