Asian states search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet
Photo: AFPAn international search has so far found no trace of a missing Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that disappeared with 239 passengers and crew on board.
Ships and aircraft from Malaysia, Vietnam, China and the Philippines are concentrating their search in an area about 240 kilometers off the coast of Vietnam\’s southwestern Tho Chu island, where Vietnamese authorities say they last detected signal from the Boeing 777-200.
A Vietnamese naval commander had told state media that the missing plane could have crashed in Malaysian waters.
However, Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Tun Hussein told a news conference that he had not been informed that the plane had been located and no wreckage has been sighted.
The airline said it lost all contact with Flight MH370 about an hour after it took off from the Malaysian capital early Saturday morning local time.
At a news conference Saturday, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmed Jauhari Yahya said the airline is working with search and rescue teams to locate the aircraft and is calling the families of the passengers and crew.
The company\’s Facebook page said the passengers represented 14 different nationalities, including 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians and four Americans.
China\’s official Xinhua news agency says contact with the plane was lost in Vietnamese airspace. It says the plane never entered China\’s air traffic control area. Vietnamese officials say the flight disappeared about a minute short of entering Vietnamese airspace.
The most recent accident involving a Boeing 777 was the Asiana Airlines crash at the San Francisco International Airport in July, 2013, in which three people died. Pilot error is suspected in that incident.
Source: VOA and agencies
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