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Malaysia Airlines Flight Carrying 239 People Goes Missing

A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing over the South China Sea on Saturday. Vietnamese state media quoting the Vietnamese … Continue reading Malaysia Airlines Flight Carrying 239 People Goes Missing


malaysiaA Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing over the South China Sea on Saturday.

Vietnamese state media quoting the Vietnamese Navy confirmed that the plane crashed into the ocean.

According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island.

However, Malaysia’s transport minister, Hishamuddin Hussein later denied any crash scene had been identified. He insisted that the government was doing everything it could to ensure that the Boeing 777-200ER flight, going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was found.

“We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side,” he said.

A crash, if confirmed, would mark the U.S.-built Boeing 777-200ER airliner’s deadliest incident since entering service 19 years ago.

The plane disappeared without giving a distress signal – a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours without issuing a distress call.

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 an earlier news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed the plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to an altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from the website’s tracking records a minute later while it was still climbing.