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Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people on flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people on flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
(35 minutes later)
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 carrying 239 people lost contact over the South China Sea on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and international aviation authorities still had not located the jetliner several hours later. Search and rescue teams in Southeast Asia were attempting to find a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane with over two hundred passengers on board on Saturday, after it disappeared from air traffic control screens.
The plane lost communication two hours into the flight in Vietnam's airspace at 1.20am local time (18:20 GMT Friday), China's official Xinhua News Agency said. Flight MH370 bound from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur was crossing between Malaysia and Vietnam when it lost contact with Malaysian air traffic controllers at 1:30am Saturday (18:40 GMT Friday), around two hours after it had taken off, according to Azaharudin Abdul Rahman, Maslaysia's civil aviation chief.
Vietnamese website VN Express said a Vietnamese search and rescue official reported that signals from the plane were detected about 120 nautical miles (140 miles) south-west of Vietnam's southernmost Ca Mau province. The plane expected at Beijing at 6:30am on Saturday (22:30 GMT Friday) was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said.
Malaysia Airlines said it was working with authorities who activated their search and rescue teams to locate the aircraft. The route would take the aircraft from Malaysia across to Vietnam and China. It added there were 153 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven each from Indonesia and Australia, five from India, four from the U.S. and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria.
"Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew. Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilise its full support," Malaysia Airlines Chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said. A Vietnamese search and rescue official, Pham Hien, said the last signal detected from the plane was 120 nautical miles (140 miles or 225 km) southwest of Vietnam's southernmost Ca Mau province, which is close to where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand.
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots sent a distress signal and the fact that there was apparently no call for help suggests that whatever happened to the flight occurred quickly.
No wreckage has yet been spotted, and Vietnamese fishermen in the area have been asked to report any suspected sign of the missing plane.
According to a government statement, Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said the plane “lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam's air traffic control”.
As the South China Sea is a tense region with competing territorial claims that have led to several low-level conflicts, particularly between China and the Philippines, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities had "no information" if terrorism was the cause, but added “we are looking at all possibilities.“
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said."Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew. 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 added."Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members," he added.
All countries in the possible flight path of the missing aircraft were performing a "communications and radio search", said John Andrews, deputy chief of the Philippines' civil aviation agency. Malaysian Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers, all teenagers from China.
Fuad Sharuji, Malaysian Airlines' vice president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet and that the pilots had reported no problem with the aircraft. Additional reporting by AP
He said the aircraft's last communication was over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.
Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time Saturday (16.41 GMT Friday) and had been expected to land in Beijing at 6.30am local time Saturday (22.30 GMT Friday), Malaysia Airlines said.
The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. Passengers were from 14 countries, including 153 from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven Australians and four Americans.
At Beijing's airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather to a hotel about nine miles from the airport to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service.
Zhai Le was waiting for her friends, a couple who were on their way back to the Chinese capital on the flight. She said she was very concerned because she had not been able to reach them.
A woman wept aboard the shuttle bus while saying on a mobile phone: "They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good."
Mr Yahya said the 53-year-old pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours and has been flying for Malaysia Airlines since 1981.
The first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Hamid, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007.
Malaysia Airlines' last fatal incident was in 1995, when one its planes crashed near the Malaysian city of Tawau, killing 34 people.
Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200 jets in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss.
The 777 had not had a fatal crash in its 20-year history until the Asiana crash in San Francisco in July 2013. All 16 crew members survived, but three of the 291 passengers, all teenage girls from China, were killed.
PA