Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With Jet Carrying Over 200

Posted by Unknown on Friday, March 7, 2014

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Asia Pacific |Malaysia Airlines Says It Lost Contact With Jet Taking Over 200 to Beijing

http://nyti.ms/1nq3xCv

HONG KONG â€” Malaysia Airlines announced Saturday morning that it had lost contact five hours earlier with one of its flights, which was carrying 239 people to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, and had activated a search-and-rescue team.

The plane, a Boeing 777-200 operating as Flight MH370, took off at 12:41 a.m. Air traffic control in Subang, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane almost two hours later, at 2:40 a.m.

The airline issued its statement at 7:24 a.m. after the plane failed to arrive in Beijing on Saturday, where it had been scheduled to land at 6:30 a.m.

Malaysia Airlines said that the flight had 227 passengers aboard, including two infants, and a crew of 12. Airline staff members have begun contacting the families of passengers and crew. â€œOur thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members,â€ the airlineâ€™s statement said.

Chinese officials expressed immediate concern. â€œWe are extremely worried upon hearing this news,â€ Qin Gang, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. â€œWe are currently in contact with relevant parties and are doing what we can to understand and confirm relevant circumstances.â€

The arrival board at Beijing Airport listed the Malaysia Airlines flight that lost contact with air traffic controllers on March 8. Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse â€” Getty Images

He added that the Foreign Ministry, the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia and the Chinese Embassy in Vietnam had begun emergency procedures. If the flight were traveling in a straight line, it would have been traveling north up the entire length of Vietnam and Vietnamâ€™s coastal waters. There was no immediate comment from Vietnamese authorities regarding the flight.

Chinese air traffic control authorities said the plane had not entered airspace that they manage or established communications with Chinese air traffic control, according to state-owned China Central Television. Malaysia Airlines said more than 150 Chinese and four Americans were aboard the plane.

In the terminal at Beijing International Airport where Flight MH370 had been due to arrive, a woman burst into tears while on a telephone.

Liu Meng, 26, said he had been at the airport since shortly before the flightâ€™s scheduled arrival time, waiting for his boss to return from a business trip. The bossâ€™s relatives had been calling Mr. Liu with questions, and, he said, he had nothing to tell them.

A Malaysian man who gave only his surname, Zhang, said that he had been waiting at the airport for two Malaysian friends on the flight, but the airport authorities had told him only that the flight had been delayed; he had learned news of the aircraftâ€™s disappearance from the web.

There have been two previous crashes of Boeing 777s. Last July, an Asiana plane came in too slow and at too low an altitude and crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport. Three people were killed and several others suffered serious permanent injuries. So far it does not appear that there was a mechanical problem with that aircraft.

In January 2008, a British Airways 777 came in short of the runway at Heathrow in London. Both engines failed. The problem was traced to icing in the fuel system. Nobody was killed.

Reporting was contributed by Chris Buckley from Hong Kong, Bree Feng and Amy Qin from Beijing, and Matthew L. Wald from the United States.

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Malaysia Airlines Says It Lost Contact With Jet Taking Over 200 to Beijing.