Malaysia Airlines said Saturday that it lost contact with one of its planes carrying 239 people to China.
Flight MH370 was on its way to Beijing when contact was lost, two hours into the flight early Saturday, the airline said in a statement. The Boeing BA -0.25% 777-200ER departed from Kuala Lumpur 12:41 a.m. local time with 227...
passengers and 12 crew members and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., it said.
Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference that the airline lost contact with the aircraft between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace and that there were no reports of bad weather along the route. Mr. Ahmad said the missing aircraft didn't send a distress signal and had enough fuel to fly an extra two hours.
He said the missing flight's passengers include 153 Chinese nationals, 38 Malaysians and 12 Indonesians. Passengers from Australia, the U.S., France, Ukraine and Canada are also on board. Asked about the fate of the aircraft and passengers, Mr. Ahmad said: "I don't want to speculate as search and rescue is still ongoing."
The flight normally takes six hours, initially over water before crossing Vietnam into southern China.
Lai Xuan Thanh, chief of Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, told The Wall Street Journal that he feared the plane may have crashed in Vietnamese airspace. "We still need to confirm everything. [There were] no reports of bad weather in the region at the time of the signal loss. We are ready to deploy search-and-rescue operations."
A spokeswoman at Civil Aviation Administration of China said Malaysia Airlines notified it about the missing plane, adding the aviation regulator activated emergency plans and requested air-traffic control operations work closely with the airline and Malaysian authorities.
"We are all very worried. We hope everyone is safe," China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a news conference scheduled as part of an annual parliament meeting. "We're doing all we can to get more details."
Malaysia Airlines' Mr. Ahmad said Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the 53-year-old captain of the missing plane, had 18,365 hours of experience and had joined the airline in 1981. His deputy is 27 and has more than 2,700 hours of flying experience.
Malaysia Airlines hasn't had any fatal accidents for the better part of two decades. In September 1995, a Malaysia Airlines Fokker 50 crashed in Tawau, Sabah, killing 34. The deadliest incident involving the airline was a December 1977 crash of a Boeing 737-200 jet that crashed in southern Johor state after an apparent hijacking attempt, killing all 100 on board.
Malaysia Airlines "operates in accordance with the highest international standards," said Andrew Herdman, managing director of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines.
Malaysia Airlines took delivery of its first 777-200ER in 1997 and is evaluating new Boeing Co. and Airbus Group EADSY -1.87% NV jetliners to replace the aging 777s in its fleet with newer, more-efficient models.
A Boeing spokeswoman said the company is "closely monitoring reports on Malaysia flight MH370. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone on board."
The 777 is among the most reliable of the current generation of widebody jetliners, and years ago it pioneered extended overwater routes across the Pacific.
Boeing officials stress the 777s excellent safety features by pointing out that in millions of takeoffs, there hasn't been a single instance of an engine failing at the instant of liftoff from a runway. For today's jets, the cruise portion of flights are considered to pose significantly fewer potential hazards than approach and landing.
In Beijing, the airline gathered a small group of people who were waiting to greet arrivals at a nearby hotel. They said they had no details to offer.
Among them was Zhang Jinchao, who said he had grown concerned for the four Indonesian business associates he was to meet when he saw there was no arrival time posted after the plane's scheduled landing.
"The board posted no time. They told us it hadn't arrived," he said.
Source:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304554004579425881625707674?mod=e2fb
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