The airline, speaking several hours after the plane had been due to
land in the Chinese capital, said it was still too early so say whether
the aircraft had crashed. It said there had been no distress signal and
it cited early speculation that the plane may have landed in Nanming in
southern China.
As news of the disappearance filtered through to
distraught friends and relatives who had been waiting for the flight to
arrive in Beijing, Malaysia Airline said it was still investigating and
took no questions at a brief news conference.
"Our
team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew," the
airlines' group chief executive officer, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said in a
statement. "Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency
responders and authorities and mobilize its full support."
"Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members," he said.
The airline said that the Boeing 777-200 aircraft had 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members on board.
It said the passengers were of 13 different nationalities, including 153 from China and four from the United States.
Flight
MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. Saturday local time,
according to a statement from the airline. It was scheduled to land in
Beijing at 6:30 a.m.
The plane last had contact with air
traffic controllers two hours after it took off 120 nautical miles off
the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, the airline said on
Saturday.
Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities were
working jointly on search operations in the area. China has dispatched
two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help in rescue work,
state television reported.
An
official at the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said the plane had
failed to check in as scheduled while it was flying over the sea between
Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.
"Its code didn't appear in our
system," Bui Van Vo, the authority's flight control department manager,
told Reuters by telephone.
China's official Xinhua news agency
also quoted the Civil Aviation Administration of China as saying the
flight lost contact while flying through Vietnamese airspace.
No signal had been picked up from the plane in Vietnam, a Vietnamese rescue official said on Saturday.
"We
have been seeking but no signal from the plane yet," Pham Hien,
director of a Vietnam maritime search and rescue coordination center in
Vung Tau, told Reuters by telephone.
Vietnamese and Chinese
media had reported that a signal from the plane had been picked up. The
reports did not identify what kind of signal.
"The information on local media about the signal near the Cape Ca Mau was inaccurate," Pham said.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters, "We are
extremely worried. We are doing all we can to get details. The news is
very disturbing. We hope everyone on the plane is safe."China is helping to locate the aircraft, Chinese state television said on one of its official microblogs.
The
flight was piloted by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a Malaysian aged 53,
according to the airline. He has a total of 18,365 flying hours and
joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981.
Distressed family members of those on board had begun gathering at Beijing airport on Saturday.
Chang
Ken Fei, a Malaysian waiting at Beijing airport for friends to arrive,
said: "I got here at seven (a.m.). At first I thought the plane was just
delayed as normal, so I came a bit later. I've just been waiting and
waiting. I asked them what was going on but they just tell us, 'We don't
know.'" If the plane is found to have crashed, the loss would
mark the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a
year, after an unblemished safety record since the jet entered service
in 1995. Last summer, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash landed in San Francisco, killing three passengers.
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 Russian Parliament could organize a vote on Crimea’s annexation
five days after the referendum on the pro-Russian region. The proposal
was approved today by the parliamentary Committee for Constitutional
Legislation and should be discussed in the Duma, next Tuesday. A
decision that risks to inflame further the tension with US and EU that
approved yesterday a first set of sanctions against Moscow.
In the meantime, an International team of OSCE observers was blocked for the second time since yesterday from entering in Crimea by unidentified armed men.
The Russian Foreign Ministry warned today that they intend to
respond to EU “nonconstructive” sanctions, “Russia will not accept such
language of sanctions and threats, but, in the event of their
implementation in practice they will not be left without a response”,
the Russian diplomacy said on a note published on the Foreign Ministry
website.
Earlier, Russia has allegedly decided to break off diplomatic relations with Ukraine,
according sources quoted by the Ukrainian news agency Unian. The agency
reports that the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to
the United Nations Vitaly Churkin announced the decision. “Moscow does
not recognize the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian power, that is why
we decided to break off diplomatic relations with Ukraine”, said
Churkin.
Earlier, Russia’s upper house of the Parliament supported Crimea’s
parliament right to hold a referendum on the region’s future status.
Foreign ministers from central Europe, the Baltics and Nordics
condemned on Friday Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and a
planned referendum planned by Crimea’s government, calling for the EU to
send an observation mission to Kiev. The group of countries, many of
them sharing land borders with Russia or the Ukraine and living with the
memory of Soviet rule, have taken a tough line in the face of Moscow as
the crisis has escalated. “Nordic and Baltic countries and the
Visegrad countries’ foreign ministers condemned today … the attack on
Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and also condemned the
illegal referendum on the joining of Crimea with Russia,” the ministers
said in joint statement from the meeting
Sourcehttp://www.euronews.com/2014/03/07/live-updates-efforts-to-de-escalate-tension-in-ukraine-meet-with-no-/
Distressed family members of those on board had begun gathering at Beijing airport on Saturday.
