Kuala Lumpur: The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on Friday expanded to the Indian Ocean, US news reports said, amid new information gathered by US investigators that the aircraft may have flown for hours after it dropped off the radar.
Broadcaster CNN reported that the USS Kidd was steaming from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean to conduct a search for the aircraft carrying 239 people.
The Beijing-bound flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur International Airport early Saturday and disappeared from the radar about an hour later.
Late Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that based on "new information" investigators had received, Washington would discuss the deployment of assets with its partners.
There was no immediate reaction from the Malaysian authorities, but Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein on Thursday said Malaysia would "spare no expense and no effort" to locate the missing plane.
The Wall Street Journal reported communication satellites received intermittent data "pings" from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, giving the aircraft's location, speed and altitude for at least five hours after it disappeared.
"The final satellite ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a 'normal' cruising altitude," the WSJ report said.
Search and rescue operations for the missing plane for the past six days have been focused in the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait.
Is Asia nations' distrust harming jet search?
Manila: Deep distrust between Asian neighbours and sensitive security issues are jamming essential communication lines in the chaotic hunt for a Malaysia Airlines plane, analysts said Thursday.
Bickering between Malaysia, China and others involved in trying to solve the baffling weekend disappearance of the jet has exposed longstanding tensions and prevented a coordinated response, they said.
"There clearly are communication problems on multiple levels. There is an underlying lack of trust in these matters," Bridget Welsh, an associate professor of political science at Singapore Management University, said.
"The issues of protecting territory, security intelligence and interests are starting to win over the common goal of finding the plane and closure."
Malaysian Airlines scraps MH370 flight code
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia Airlines announced Thursday morning that the flight codes of its missing plane, MH370 and MH371, will be dropped and replaced by new ones.
"As a mark of respect to the passengers and crew of MH370 March 8, 2014, the MH370 and MH371 flight codes will be retired from the Malaysia Airlines' Kuala Lumpur-Beijing-Kuala Lumpur route," the airline said in a website update.
With effect from March 14, new numbers will replace MH370 and MH371 -- MH318 for Kuala Lumpur-Beijing and MH319 for Beijing-Kuala Lumpur - flights it said.
No debris found near site China satellites spotted wreckage
Beijing: Planes searching an area where Chinese satellites spotted possible debris from a missing Malaysian passenger jet have found no sign of wreckage, officials said Thursday, dimming hopes of a breakthrough in the mystery.
China said its satellites had detected three large floating objects in a suspected crash site near where the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared Saturday on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, lost contact.
"This morning we sent two AN-26 aircrafts to inspect the maritime areas near Con Dao island where three suspicious objects were detected by Chinese satellite. Both have returned and we found nothing so far," Dinh Viet Thang, deputy director of Vietnam Civil Aviation Authority, told AFP on the sixth day of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Malaysia will never give up hope of finding jet
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's search effort for a plane missing with 239 people on board is "unprecedented" and authorities will continue searching until they find it, the country's transport minister said Wednesday.
"We will never give up hope," of finding missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.
There was no "confusion" in Malaysia's so-far fruitless search for a jet that went missing five days ago with 239 people aboard, the country's transport minister said Wednesday amid mounting criticism.
"I don't think so. It's far from it. It's only confusion if you want it to be seen as confusion," said Hishammuddin Hussein.
Search for missing jet spreads across South East Asia
KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC, Vietnam: The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner expanded on Wednesday to cover a swathe of Southeast Asia, from the South China Sea to India's territorial waters, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board.
Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control.
Hanoi later said the search - now in its fifth day - was back on in full force and was even extending on to land. China also said its air force would sweep areas in the sea, clarifying however that no searches over land were planned.
The seas off India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands are also being combed for traces of the lost jet.
"We are expanding to the east of the expected route of the flight and on land," Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, Vietnam's deputy army chief of staff and spokesman for its search and rescue committee, told reporters.
The confusion over where to look is adding to one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history, and prolonging the agonising wait for hundreds of relatives of the missing.
Flight MH370 dropped out of sight an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday, under clear night skies and with no suspicion of any mechanical problems.
Dozens of planes and ships have already searched tens of thousands of square miles of Malaysia and off both its coasts without finding a trace of the Boeing 777.
Adding to the frustration and uncertainty, Malaysia's military has said the plane could have turned around from its planned flight path, but there were conflicting statements and reports about how far and in which direction it could have flown after communication was lost.
OFF COURSE? Malaysia's air force chief, Rodzali Daud, denied saying military radar had tracked MH370 flying over the Strait of Malacca off the country's west coast, about 500 km (310 miles) from the point ,roughly midway between the east coast town of Kota Bharu and Vietnam, where it was last seen by air traffic control.
Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper on Tuesday quoted Rodzali as saying the plane was last detected at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca at 2.40 a.m. on Saturday, more than an hour after it lost contact.
"It would not be appropriate for the Royal Malaysian Air Force to issue any official conclusions as to the aircraft's flight path until a high amount of certainty and verification is achieved," Rodzali said in a statement on Wednesday.
"However all ongoing search operations are at the moment being conducted to cover all possible areas where the aircraft could have gone down in order to ensure no possibility is overlooked." Indonesia and Thailand, which lie on either side of the northern part of the Malacca Strait, have said their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace.
The massive search operation involving ships and aircraft from 10 countries is spread out over the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, which lie between Malaysia and Vietnam, and in the Strait of Malacca extending into the Andaman Sea.
An Indian foreign ministry official said Malaysia has sought its help in the search. India has a large military command in its Andaman and Nicobar islands and its navy patrols in the Malacca Strait.
Malaysia Airlines says no reason to think crew caused jet's disappearance
Beijing: A senior Malaysia Airlines' executive said on Wednesday that the airline has "no reason to believe" that any actions by the crew caused the disappearance of a jetliner over the weekend.
The search for the jetliner, which vanished on a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, expanded further into the Andaman and South China Seas on Wednesday, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board. With no concrete evidence to explain the plane's disappearance, authorities have not ruled out anything.
Police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.
Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, said the captain in charge of the flight was a very seasoned pilot with an excellent record.
"There have been absolutely no implications that we are aware of that there was anything untoward in either his behaviour or attitude," Dunleavy told Reuters in an interview.
"We have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft." Dunleavy said he was sceptical of a report by a South African woman who said the co-pilot of the missing plane, Farid Ab Hamid, had invited her and a female travelling companion to sit in the cockpit during a flight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security.
"Because just getting into that area requires you to go through the secure doors that we have in the cabin all the time," he said. "And not only would that have been unusual, but it also would have meant you'd have to walk by our cabin crew as well, and have the code to get through. So I'm dubious, but I'm going to let the authorities investigate and tell us what happened."
The airline earlier said it was taking seriously the report by the woman, Jonti Roos, who said in an interview with Australia's Channel Nine TV that she and her friend were invited to fly in the cockpit by Fariq and the pilot of a flight between Phuket, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur in December 2011. The TV channel showed pictures of the four apparently in a plane's cockpit.
The airline will give $5,000 per passenger to cover hotel expenses of relatives awaiting news, Dunleavy added. The relatives, who have been staying at hotels near a Beijing airport since the plane went missing on Saturday, have angrily accused the airline of keeping them in the dark.
Malaysia Airlines said at least 152 of the 227 passengers on flight MH370 were Chinese.
Malaysia Airlines co-pilot invited two women into cockpit on earlier flight
Kuala Lumpur: A co-pilot at the controls of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 invited a South African tourist and her friend into the cockpit where he smoked, took photos and entertained the pair during a previous international flight.
Malaysia Airlines says it is investigating an Australian TV report that the co-pilot on its missing flight had invited two women to stay in the cockpit for a flight two years ago.
Jonti Roos, told the show "A Current Affair" that she was invited into the cockpit along with her friend Jaan Maree, and described details of the encounter.
The programme aired multiple still photographs from Roos that showed the women inside the cockpit and the pilots apparently working the plane's controls.
The airline said late Tuesday it wouldn't comment on the report until its investigation into it is complete.
Roos said Fariq Abdul Hamid and the second pilot talked to her and her friend in the cockpit during the entire one-hour flight in December 2011 from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur.
Roos didn't immediately reply to a message sent to her via Facebook.
Mr Hamid had identified the tourists in the boarding queue at Phuket airport in December 2011. As they took their seats on the aircraft, a flight steward approached the women and invited them to join the pilots in the cockpit.
Ms Roos described how she and Ms Maree sat in two spare jump seats for the whole journey, including take-off and landing, described by Australian media as a "worrying lapse of security."
The TV showed Ms Roos and Ms Maree posing for pictures with the pilots, who smoked cigarettes during the midair rendezvous.
“They were so engaged in conversation that he took my friend's hand and he was looking at her palm and said ‘your hand is very creased. That means you’re a very creative person’ and commented on her nail polish.”
Despite pictures exposing the gross misconduct of the distracted pilots, Ms Roos said she wasn’t concerned for her safety. “I did feel safe. I don’t think there was one instance where I felt threatened or I felt that they didn’t know what they were doing,” she told the show. "The whole time I felt they were very friendly. I felt they were very competent in what they were doing."
Plane tracked to west coast
Meanwhile, Malaysia's military believes it tracked a missing jetliner by radar over the Strait of Malacca, far from where it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a military source said.
In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, now on its fourth day, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew.
"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the military official, who has been briefed on investigations, said.
The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast. The airline said on Saturday that radio and radar contact with Flight MH370 was lost off the east coast Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.
Police had earlier said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might explain its disappearance, along with the possibility of a hijack, sabotage or mechanical failure.
The plane left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early on Saturday morning, vanishing from civilian radar screens about an hour after take-off over the sea separating eastern Malaysia from the southern tip of Vietnam.
No idea where to look
In Phu Quoc, Vietnam, helicopters and planes criss-cross the sky as scores of boats search below - but officials say the multi-national hunt for missing flight MH370 is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"The biggest problem is just knowing where to look - especially at night," Vo Van Tuan, a top Vietnamese military officer who is leading Vietnam's search effort, told AFP.
The vastness of the search zone reflects authorities' bafflement over the plane's disappearance. On the fourth day of searching, the operation had grown to involve 42 ships and 35 aircraft from Southeast Asian countries, Australia, China, New Zealand and the United States. Japan said Tuesday it was sending a plane to join the search efforts.
Vietnam has mobilised its first major search and rescue operation, deploying aircraft, boats and its commercial fishing fleet to help Malaysia search for the jet.
The hunt to discover the plane's fate will likely be "a long mission that requires patience," Vietnamese Major General Do Minh Tuan told AFP as he flew on a military helicopter near the country's southern Tho Chu island.
No distress signal
Since there was no distress signal or radio contact indicating a problem and, in the absence of any wreckage or flight data, police have been left trawling through passenger and crew lists for potential leads.
"Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities," Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told a news conference.
"We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioural pattern of all the passengers."
Stolen passports
The fact that at least two passengers on board had used stolen passports, confirmed by Interpol, has raised suspicions of foul play. But Southeast Asia is known as a hub for false documents that are also used by smugglers, illegal migrants and asylum seekers.
Police chief Khalid said one of the men had been identified as a 19-year-old Iranian, Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, who appeared to be an illegal immigrant. The identity of the other was still being checked.
"We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group, and we believe he was trying to migrate to Germany," Khalid said of the teenager. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said.
Asked if that meant he ruled out a hijack, Khalid said: "(We are giving) same weightage to all (possibilities) until we complete our investigations." Both men entered Malaysia on Feb 28, at least one from Phuket, in Thailand, eight days before boarding the flight to Beijing, Malaysian immigration chief Aloyah Mamat told the news conference. Both held onward reservations to Western Europe.
Police in Thailand, where the passports were stolen and the tickets used by the two men were booked, said they did not think they were linked to the disappearance of the plane.
"We haven't ruled it out, but the weight of evidence we're getting swings against the idea that these men are or were involved in terrorism," Supachai Puikaewcome, chief of police in the Thai resort city of Pattaya, said.
Oil slick
KUALA LUMPUR: Samples taken from an oil slick off Malaysia are not from a missing jet based on results of a chemistry lab analysis, an official said Monday.
Flight MH370 went missing over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early Saturday.
No confirmed evidence of the plane's fate has yet been found despite a massive search, leaving authorities stumped and anguished family members demanding answers.
Infrasound data
In the United Nations, the head of the organisation that monitors the nuclear test ban treaty says he has asked its experts to see if they detected an explosion at high altitude of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane.
Lassina Zerbo, executive director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) told a news conference Monday that the CTBTO uses "infrasound" - or infrasonic sensors - to monitor the earth mainly for atmospheric nuclear explosions.
Zerbo said infrasound is the most suitable technology to check if there was an explosion on the missing plane and if there was a monitoring station nearby, "or the explosion is at a level or at an amplitude that it could be detected".
He said he asked the head of the CTBTO's International Data Center to examine the infrasound data.
Oil samples
Malaysian authorities had collected oil samples from a slick about 185 kilometres (115 miles) north off the country's east coast state of Kelantan and sent it for analysis in a laboratory in the capital Kuala Lumpur.
But the results came back negative for jet fuel.
"The oil is not used for aircraft," Maritime Enforcement Agency spokeswoman Faridah Shuib told AFP, adding it was a type used by ships.
The slick, from which the samples were collected, was just south of the point where air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, which carried 239 people.
The two-kilometre long slick was the largest of several in the area.
Still 'no confirmed plane debris found'
An international search and rescue effort still had not found any confirmed debris from a Malaysia Airlines jet more than two days after it mysteriously went missing, an official said on Monday.
"Unfortunately, ladies and gentleman, we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft itself, said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, head of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation.
In the absence of any firm clues as to what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight 370, Azharuddin had few answers in a press conference for any of the burning questions surrounding what befell the plane.
It vanished early Saturday with 239 people aboard. No distress signal was ever sent, authorities said. "We understand that you want answers from us. We are as eager as you are," he said.
Vietnamese authorities had said earlier that two floating objects were seen from the air late on Sunday some 80 kilometres (50 miles) off Tho Chu island. But Azharuddin said Vietnamese officials had not yet confirmed to Malaysia whether any reported sightings were indeed debris from the plane.
"There are various objects that we have seen, but none of them at this moment (have been confirmed to be) from this aircraft," he said.
Azharuddin also confirmed reports that five passengers who had purchased tickets and checked baggage did not make the flight.
He said Malaysia Airlines had removed those passengers' baggage once it learned they did not board the plane, in accordance with standard procedure. "But we have to remove the baggage that they checked in... we have done so on this aircraft," he said.
He also said authorities were still waiting for an analysis of oil samples taken from a slick in the sea to determine whether it was from the plane. Another official had said results could come Monday afternoon.
"We are looking at every angle. We are looking at every aspect of what could have happened," he said. "Again, we have to get concrete evidence... we have to find the aircraft."
Earlier report
HO CHI MINH CITY: Vietnamese searchers on Sunday spotted possible aircraft debris after combing the sea for nearly 48 hours in the hunt for a Malaysian passenger jet that vanished with 239 people aboard, officials said.
The discovery, which could confirm the worst fears of anguished relatives, came after Malaysia's government launched a terror probe into the Boeing 777's disappearance, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports.
"We received information from a Vietnamese plane saying that they found two broken objects, which seem like those of an aircraft, located about 50 miles (80 kilometres) to the south-west of Tho Chu Island," said an official from Vietnam's National Committee for Search and Rescue, who did not want to be named.
The island is part of a small archipelago off the southwestern tip of Vietnam, and lies northeast of Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, from where Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 left early Saturday bound for Beijing.
"As it is night they cannot fish them out for proper identification. They have located the position of the areas and flown back to land," the Vietnamese official added.
Planes and boats would be sent back to the area Monday to investigate further, he said.
Two large oil slicks which authorities suspect were caused by jet fuel were detected late Saturday farther south of the island chain, and observed later by an AFP journalist aboard a Vietnamese spotter plane.
Both MAS and Malaysia's civil aviation authority, however, said they had no new information to offer after the apparent Vietnamese discovery.
Malaysian officials said earlier that MH370 may have inexplicably turned back towards Kuala Lumpur.
The plane, captained by a veteran MAS pilot, had relayed no indications of distress, and weather at the time was said to be stable.
'Puzzled'
The United States sent an FBI team to investigate, but US officials stressed there was as yet no evidence of terrorism.
"There is a distinct possibility the airplane did a turn-back, deviating from the course," said Malaysia's air force chief, General Rodzali Daud, citing radar data.
But MAS chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the Boeing 777's systems would have set off alarm bells in that case.
"When there is an air turn-back the pilot would be unable to proceed as planned," he said, adding authorities were "quite puzzled" over the situation.
A total of 40 ships and 34 aircraft from an array of Southeast Asian countries, China and the US have been involved in the search, with two Australian surveillance aircraft due to join in.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had asked Malaysia to continue the search, saying every minute counts, according to a report from the official Xinhua news agency early Monday.
The report said he told his Malaysian counterpart Anifah Aman: "Search and rescue should not stop so long as there is a glimmer of hope."
After it emerged that two people boarded the flight with stolen European passports, Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he was looking at four suspect passengers in all.
He said authorities were examining CCTV footage of the two with fake passports.
"We have managed to get visuals of them," he said, adding that Malaysia was liaising with other countries' intelligence agencies on the findings. He gave no more details.
Hishammuddin also confirmed the FBI was dispatching personnel to Malaysia.
Missing jet may have disintegrated in mid-air
Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board suspect it may have disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said on Sunday, as Vietnam reported a possible sighting of wreckage from the plane.
International police agency Interpol confirmed that at least two passports recorded in its database as lost or stolen were used by passengers on the flight, raising suspicions of foul play.
Nearly 48 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, mystery still surrounded its fate. Malaysia's air force chief said the Beijing-bound airliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before it vanished from radar screens.
"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," a source involved in the investigations in Malaysia told Reuters.
If the plane had plunged intact from close to its cruising altitude, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly.
Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.
Dozens of military and civilian vessels have been criss-crossing waters beneath the aircraft's flight path, but have found no confirmed trace of the lost plane, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.
Late on Sunday, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website that a Vietnamese navy plane had spotted an object in the sea suspected of being part of the plane, but that it was too dark to be certain. Search planes were set to return to investigate the suspected debris at daybreak.
Widening search
"The outcome so far is there is no sign of the aircraft," Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said.
"On the possibility of hijack, we are not ruling out any possibility," he told reporters.
The Malaysian authorities said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who were using false identity documents.
Possible aircraft debris found in sea
Possible debris from vanished Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was found in the sea off Vietnam by a search team Sunday, a senior official said.
It was the first time that authorities had given any positive indication that traces of the Boeing 777, which disappeared in the early hours of Saturday carrying 239 people, may have been discovered.
"We received information from a Vietnamese plane saying that they found two broken objects, which seem like those of an aircraft, located about 50 miles to the south-west of Tho Chu Island," said the senior from official from the National Committee for Search and Rescue, who did not want to be named.
"As it is night they cannot fish them out for proper identification. They have located the position of the areas and flown back to the land," he added.
Planes and boats would be sent back to the area Monday to investigate further, he said.
Tho Chu island is part of a small archipelago off the south-western tip of Vietnam which belongs to the communist country.
Two large oil slicks which authorities suspect were caused by jet fuel were detected late Saturday further south off the island chain.
Missing plane pilot an aviation geek
The pilot of a Malaysia Airlines jet that went missing on Saturday enjoyed flying the Boeing 777 so much that he spent his off days tinkering with a flight simulator of the plane that he had set up at home, current and former co-workers said.
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, captain of the airliner carrying 239 people bound for Beijing from the Malaysian capital, had always wanted to become a pilot and joined the national carrier in 1981.
Airline staff who worked with the pilot said Zaharie knew the ins and outs of the Boeing 777 extremely well, as he was always practicing with the simulator. They declined to be identified due to company policy.
"He was an aviation tech geek. You could ask him anything and he would help you. That is the kind of guy he is," said a Malaysia Airlines co-pilot who had flown with Zaharie in the past.
Zaharie set up the Boeing 777 simulator at his home in a suburb on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital where many airline staff stay as it provides quick access to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Pictures posted by Zaharie on his Facebook page show a simulator with three computer monitors, a tangle of wires and several panels.
"We used to tease him. We would ask him, why are you bringing your work home," said a pilot who knew Zaharie for 20 years.
Zaharie's passion for aviation went beyond the Boeing 777.
Other photos posted up by him on Facebook show he was an avid collector of remote-controlled, miniature aircraft, including a lightweight twin-engined helicopter.
Zaharie was certified by Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) as an examiner to conduct simulator tests for pilots, said several officials from Malaysia Airlines.
They said it was impossible that Zaharie would be in any way to blame for the disappearance of the aircraft.
"He knew everything about the Boeing 777. Something significant would have had to happen for Zaharie and the plane to go missing. It would have to be total electrical failure," said another Malaysia Airlines pilot who knew Zaharie.
Zaharie has flown Fokker F50s, Boeing 737s and the Airbus A300 in over three decades with Malaysia Airlines.
He had over 18,000 hours of flying experience. His 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had clocked 2,763 hours - having joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.
Route deviation
Indications that the plane may have deviated from its route only compounded the anxiety of relatives, many of them Chinese, desperate for news of their loved ones.
"There is a distinct possibility the airplane did a turn-back, deviating from the course," said Malaysia's air force chief, General Rodzali Daud, citing radar data.
But Malaysia Airlines (MAS) chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the Boeing 777's systems would have set off alarm bells.
"When there is an air turn-back the pilot would be unable to proceed as planned," he said, adding authorities were "quite puzzled" over the situation.
US team joins investigation
The US National Transportation Safety Board said that a team of investigators travelled to Asia late Saturday to help in the missing Malaysia Airlines jet probe.
The team will be "ready to assist with the investigation of the March 8 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 event," the NTSB said in a brief statement.
"Because of the lengthy travel time from the United States, the NTSB has sent a team of investigators, accompanied by technical advisers from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, to the area so they will be positioned to offer US assistance," the statement read.
Jet suffered broken wing
Malaysia Airlines said on Sunday that the Boeing 777-200 that disappeared with 239 people aboard suffered a broken wing tip in 2012 but was fully repaired and cleared to fly.
The incident occurred in a minor collision with another aircraft on the ground at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, according to previous reports.
"The aircraft had a clipped wing tip. A portion, possibly a metre (1.1 yard) of the wing tip, was torn," Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told reporters.
"It was repaired by Boeing and cleared by Boeing and was approved by various authorities. It was safe to fly."
4 names on investigation list
Malaysia is investigating four names on the flight manifest as it probes a possible terror link, the transport minister said Sunday.
The comments by Hishammuddin Hussain looked set to fuel speculation over whether a security breach or hijack may have played a role in what would be Malaysia's worst-ever aviation disaster.
Those fears arose after it emerged Saturday that two people boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 with stolen European passports.
Hishammuddin, when asked to confirm Malaysian media reports that another two suspect passengers had been identified, said: "All the four names are with me."
However, he declined to offer details, saying authorities were examining "the entire manifest".
Malaysia activates intelligence investigation
Malaysia is looking at a possible terror link in the disappearance of an airliner believed to have gone down in the sea with 239 people aboard, the country's transport minister said on Sunday.
Hishammuddin Hussain said Malaysian security agencies were investigating after it was discovered that two passengers may have boarded missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using stolen passports, raising fears of potential terrorism.
"At the same time our own intelligence have been activated, and of course, the counterterrorism units... from all the relevant countries have been informed."
Meanwhile, planes and ships from across Asia resumed the hunt on Sunday with the jetliner missing for more than 24 hours.
There was still no confirmed sighting of wreckage from the Boeing 777 in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam where it vanished from screens early Saturday morning en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. The weather was fine, the plane was already cruising and the pilots had no time to send a distress signal – unusual circumstance for a modern jetliner to crash.
Li Jiaxiang, administrator of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said some debris had been spotted, but it was unclear whether it came from the plane. Vietnamese authorities said they had seen nothing close to two large oil slicks they saw Saturday and said might be from the missing plane.
Malaysia's civil aviation chief Azaharuddin Abdul Rahman said his country had expanded its area of operation to the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, on the other side of the country from where the plane disappeared. "This is standard procedure. If we can't find it here, we go to other places," he said.
Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over many square kilometres. If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.
Investigators will need access to the flight data recorders to determine what happened.
Terrorism is always considered a possibility, but the sudden disappearance of Flight MH370 has given extra emphasis to speculation a bomb might have been on board. Other scenarios include some catastrophic failure of the engines or structure of the plane, extreme turbulence or even pilot suicide.
On Saturday, foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand. It's unclear how common it is for people to get on flights with fake passports, but the news added to fears of terrorism.
Azaharuddin said Sunday that authorities were "aware of the situation and we are doing an investigation at the moment."
Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San Francisco, killing three passengers, all teenagers from China.
Foul play
Professor Jason Middleton, the head of the Sydney-based University of New South Wales' School of Aviation, said terrorism or some other form of foul play seemed a likely explanation.
"You're looking at some highly unexpected thing, and the only ones people can think of are basically foul play, being either a bomb or some immediate incapacitating of the pilots by someone doing the wrong thing and that might lead to an airplane going straight into the ocean," Middleton said on Sunday. "With two stolen passports (on board), you'd have to suspect that that's one of the likely options."
Just 9 per cent of fatal accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude, according to a statistical summary of commercial jet accidents done by Boeing. Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said Saturday there was no indication the pilots had sent a distress signal.
The plane was last inspected 10 days ago and found to be "in proper condition," Ignatius Ong, CEO of Malaysia Airlines subsidiary Firefly airlines, said at a news conference.
Two-thirds of the jet's passengers were from China. The rest were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.
Asked whether terrorism was suspected, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities were "looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks."
Greg Barton, a professor of international politics at Australia's Monash University and a terrorism expert, said if the disaster was the result of terrorism, there is no obvious suspect. If it was terrorism, Barton expected China would be quick to blame separatists from the ethnic Uighur minority, as authorities did recently when 29 people were killed in knife attacks at a train station in the southern city of Kunming.
"If a group like that is behind it, then suddenly they've got a capacity that we didn't know they had before, they've executed it very well - that's very scary," Barton told AP. "It's safe to start with the assumption that that's not very likely, but possible."
Oil slicks
Vietnam said Saturday rescue planes searching for a missing Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people spotted two large oil slicks in the sea and it is sending boats to the area.
"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," the army's deputy chief-of-staff, 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.
Mystery has shrouded the fate of the jet since it dropped off the radar shortly after it left Kuala Lumpur on an overnight flight to Beijing carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew.
An international rescue effort is underway involving Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and China, which had 153 nationals on board. The US State Department confirmed that three Americans were aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
An Italian and an Austrian feared to have died on a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft that went missing in Asia on Saturday had their passports stolen and are safe, officials said.
Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, was on holiday in Thailand and immediately phoned home after seeing on the news that an Italian with his name was on the vanished airliner - and before his father had seen the news.
"I turned on (rolling television news channel) RAI News24 and I saw what had happened. Thankfully, everything is okay. Luigi is on holiday, he's coming home in three weeks," his father told news agency Ansa.
Maraldi had his passport stolen in Malaysia in August.
Malaysia Airlines meanwhile also contacted Austria's foreign ministry, saying that the name of an Austrian was also on the passenger list of the plane, a spokesman for the ministry said in
Vienna.
"We contacted the person to whom the passport belonged. This person is in Austria and safe and sound. His passport was stolen in 2012 on a trip to Thailand," spokesman Martin Weiss told AFP.
He gave no details on the person's name or age. He said the ministry had not been contacted about any other missing Austrians thought to have been on the flight.
No trace had been found by nightfall on Saturday.
No sign of plane yet, says Malaysia
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.
Two infants and 12 crew members were among the passengers, 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, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria. The Rome Foreign Ministry, however, said no Italian was on board the missing plane.
He said search operations in an area about midway between Malaysia and Vietnam's southern coast were being intensified.
Images emerge
An image has emerged of two of the passengers feared dead after a Malaysian Airlines jetliner went missing over the South China Sea.
The picture was released by Hamid Ramlan and shows his daughter Norliakmar Hamid on the left and and her husband Razahan Zamani, posing just before take-off from Kuala Lumpur on Friday.
'Treated like dogs'
Families of those on board the missing plane have accused the airline of treating them like dogs over the lack of information they have been given.
The Boeing 777-200 aircraft has been missing since 10.20pm on Friday UAE time, and despite a claim from Vietnamese authorites that it crashed in their waters, is yet to be found.
Relatives were taken to a hotel near Beijing airport, put in a room and told to wait for information from the airline, but none came.
About 20 people stormed out of the room at one point, enraged they had been given no information.
“There’s no one from the company here, we can’t find a single person. They’ve just shut us in this room and told us to wait,” said one middle-aged man, who declined to give his name.
“We want someone to show their face. They haven’t even given us the passenger list,” he said.
Another relative, trying to evade a throng of reporters, muttered: “They’re treating us worse than dogs.”
'No information'
Malaysia's transport minister said on Saturday the government currently had "no information" or confirmation that a missing Malaysian airliner had crashed, but was urgently asking Vietnam for details.
Air traffic controllers in the region lost contact with the Malaysian Airlines plane early on Saturday, triggering a search in the South China Sea involving several nations.
Vietnam's government has said that the aircraft, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was near its airspace when it lost contact.
A Vietnamese state media report later quoted a naval official saying the Boeing 777-200 had crashed off southern Vietnam.
Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussain said he has not been able to confirm that report with Vietnamese civil aviation authorities.
"But since that information came from the Vietnamese navy, I have asked our navy to contact their counterparts immediately," he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
"At the moment we have no information of any wreckage at sea. I can confirm that we have not yet found the location of the plane."
Malaysia, Vietnam, China, and the Philippines have dispatched planes and aircraft to the South China Sea to search for the missing plane.
Denial
Earlier, Hishamuddin said there was no sign of any plane wreckage and denied Vietnamese state media reports that the plane had crashed south of an island off Vietnam.
"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," Hishamuddin 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."
Vietnam media report
Vietnam state media reported the Boeing 777-200ER crashed into the sea, quoting a senior naval official.
The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had been missing for hours when Vietnam's Tuoi Tre news quoted Admiral Ngo Van Phat as saying he had asked boats from an island off south Vietnam to rush to the crash site.
Malaysia Airlines said earlier in the day that no distress signal had been given and cited early speculation that the plane may have landed in Nanming in southern China.
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 a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia and Vietnam were conducting a joint search and rescue, he said but gave no details. China has also sent two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help in any rescue, state television said on one of its microblogs.
"We are extremely worried," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing before the 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 12.21am (8.21pm UAE Friday) but no trace had been found of the plane hours after it was due to land in the Chinese capital at 6.30am (2.30am UAE Saturday) the same day.
"We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts with flight MH370," Jauhari said.
Malaysia Airlines said people from 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians, six Australians and three Americans.
It also said a Chinese infant and an American infant were on board.
If it is confirmed that the plane has crashed, the loss would mark the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year and by far the worst since the jet entered service in 1995.
An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180.
Boeing said it was aware of reports that the Malaysia Airlines plane was missing and was monitoring the situation but had no further comment. The flight was operating as a China Southern Airlines codeshare.
An official at the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) said the plane had failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while it was flying over the sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh city.
Lost contact
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 lost contact early Saturday morning (Friday night UAE) on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and international aviation authorities still hadn’t located the jetliner hours later.
The plane lost communication two hours into the flight in Vietnam’s airspace at 1.20am (10.20pm UAE Friday), China’s official Xinhua News Agency said. Vietnamese website VN Express said a Vietnamese search and rescue official reported that signals from the plane were detected about 120 nautical miles (140 miles; 225 kilometres) southwest of Vietnam’s southernmost Ca Mau province.
Malaysia Airlines said it was working with authorities who activated their search and rescue teams to locate the aircraft. The route would take the aircraft from Malaysia across to Vietnam and China.
“Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew. Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilise its full support,” Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said in a statement.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members,” he added.
All countries in the possible flight path of the missing aircraft were performing a “communications and radio search”, said John Andrews, deputy chief of the Philippines’ civil aviation agency.
Fuad Sharuji, Malaysian Airlines’ vice president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet (10,670 metres) and that the pilots had reported no problem with the aircraft. He said the aircraft’s last communication was over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.
Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on Saturday (8.41pm UAE Friday) and had been expected to land in Beijing at 6.30am on Saturday (2.30am UAE Saturday), Malaysia Airlines said.
The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. Passengers were from 14 countries, including 153 from China and 38 from Malaysia.
At Beijing’s airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather to a hotel about 15 kilometres from the airport to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service.
Zhai Le was waiting for her friends, a couple who were on their way back to the Chinese capital on the flight. She said she was very concerned because she hadn’t been able to reach them.
A woman wept aboard the shuttle bus while saying on a mobile phone, “They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good!”
Yahya, the airline CEO, said the 53-year-old pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours and has been flying for Malaysia Airlines since 1981. The first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Hamid, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007.
Malaysia Airlines’ last fatal incident was in 1995, when one its planes crashed near the Malaysian city of Tawau, killing 34 people.
Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200 jets in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss.
The 777 had not had a fatal crash in its 20-year history until the Asiana crash in San Francisco in July 2013. All 16 crew members survived, but three of the 291 passengers, all teenage girls from China, were killed.
