According to sources a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane with 239 people on board has lost contact with the airline while over the South China Sea and authorities are still looking for the flight while Philippines and China join search.
The flight vanished after reaching 35,000 feet, carrying passengers of 12 nationalities. Passengers were Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Australian, French, American, New-Zealander, Canadian, Russian, Italian, Thai, Dutch and Austrian.
Malaysia Airlines is still unable to establish any contact or determine the whereabouts of flight MH370. It has denied crash report so far, says plane still missing while Vietnamese state media says it has crashed in the South China Sea
Malaysia Airlines, operator of Flight MH370 that has established a record as one of the Asia-Pacific's best full-service carriers in terms of safety and service despite some recent financial problems.
Search and rescue planes scoured waters off the southern tip of Vietnam on Monday, searching for any trace of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner 48 hours after it vanished from radar screens with 239 people on board.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website late on Sunday that a Vietnamese navy plane had spotted an object in the sea suspected of being part of the Boeing 777-200ER, but that it was too dark to be certain.
A senior source involved in preliminary investigations in Malaysia said the failure to find any debris for two days, despite dozens of vessels and aircraft crisscrossing the sea below the flight path, indicated the plane may have broken up mid-flight.
The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by American spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none at all.
The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who were not on the plane. Their passports had been stolen in Thailand during the past two years.
Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol's databases.
MNA
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