http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/m ... tact-plane
A search and rescue operation is under way after Malaysia Airlines said a plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on board went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The company said that it lost contact with the aircraft two hours after takeoff and it was now working with authorities who had deployed search and rescue teams to locate the aircraft. The plane left Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time on Saturday (6.41pm GMT on Friday).
A statement from the airline said it was contacting the next-of-kin of passengers and crew.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members," it said.
Radar contact with the aircraft, flight MH370, was lost in airspace controlled by Vietnam in the early hours of Saturday morning, China's Xinhua news agency said. The aircraft did not enter airspace controlled by China and did not make contact with Chinese controllers, Xinhua added.
Xinhua said 160 of the passengers on board were Chinese nationals, citing Chinese aviation officials. A Malaysian Airlines spokesman said Australians were believed to be among the other nationalities on board, News Corp reported.
China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, told a scheduled press conference China was doing all it could to confirm details of the incident and said he was "very worried", state media reported.
The flight had been expected to land at Beijing at 6.30am local time. The passengers on board included two infants, according to the airline, which also released a telephone number which members of the public could call to seek information.
From The Guardian live feed:
Aviation experts have expressed surprise at the apparent sudden failure of such a reliable aircraft. Mohan Ranganathan, an aviation safety consultant who serves on India’s Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Committee, says it is “very, very rare” for an aircraft to lose contact completely without any previous indication of problems.
The online flight data suggested the plane had experienced a very rapid loss of height and change in the direction it was heading, he said.
Al-Jazeera are quoting a former United Airlines pilot, Ross Aimer, on the fact that the aircraft was lost without any communiction from the crew.
“The fact that there was absolutely no distress signal is very disturbing,” he said. “This is almost unprecedented that we lose an aircraft in such a way … In that area of the world, over Vietnam, there is sporadic radar coverage to begin with,” he said. “It is disturbing that there was absolutely no communication from the aircraft.”
The aviation website Leeham news has posted a list of the standard possible causes that will be investigated in an incident of this nature. They stress that these are not specific to this case, but include:
• Catastrophic structural failure
• Dual engine flame-out
• Clear air turbulence
• Human intervention, such as penetration of the cockpit or a bomb
• Accidental shooting-down
• Suicide of the pilot