Family members comfort a family whose member was travelling in the aircraft that is missing.

Family members comfort Chrisman Siregar, left, and his wife Herlina Panjaitan, the parents of Firman Siregar, one of the Indonesian citizens registered on the manifest to have boarded the Malaysia Airlines jetliner flight MH370 that went missing over the South China Sea, at their residence in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia on Sunday, March 9, 2014. Family members comfort Chrisman Siregar, left, and his wife Herlina Panjaitan, the parents of Firman Siregar, one of the Indonesian citizens registered on the manifest to have boarded the Malaysia Airlines jetliner flight MH370 that went missing over the South China Sea, at their residence in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia on Sunday, March 9, 2014.

Vietnamese authorities searching waters for the missing Boeing 777 jetliner spotted an object on Sunday that they suspected was one of the plane's doors, as international intelligence agencies joined the investigation into two passengers who boarded the aircraft with stolen passports.-AP

Interpol: passports on flights must be checked

Interpol knew about stolen passports that two passengers used to board an ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight bound for China, but no country checked the police agency's vast database on stolen documents beforehand, it said Sunday. Interpol said it hopes authorities will "learn from the tragedy."



Probe into missing Malaysia plane looks at possible mid-air disintegration

Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner with 239 people on board are narrowing the focus of their inquiries on the possibility that it disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said on Sunday.

"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," said the source, who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia.

If the plane had plunged intact from such a height, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly on the investigation. -Reuters

Malaysian jetliner may have turned back before vanishing

A missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before vanishing from radar screens, military officers said on Sunday, deepening the mystery surrounding the fate of the plane and the 239 people aboard.

Despite dozens of military and civilians vessels and aircraft criss-crossing waters to the east and west of Malaysia, no wreckage has been found, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam.

Italian Luigi Maraldi whose stolen passport was used by a passenger boarding a missing Malaysian airliner, shows his passport as he reports himself to Thai police at Phuket police station in Phuket province, southern Thailand Sunday, March 9, 2014. Italian Luigi Maraldi whose stolen passport was used by a passenger boarding a missing Malaysian airliner, shows his passport as he reports himself to Thai police at Phuket police station in Phuket province, southern Thailand Sunday, March 9, 2014.

"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.



Fake passports skew search for missing Malaysian plane



Malaysian authorities are investigating the identities of at least two other passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, in addition to two who were found to be using stolen passports, a security official said.

Investigators were verifying the identities with the relevant embassies in Malaysia, said the official, who has knowledge of the investigation and declined to be identified. The passengers being checked had all bought their tickets through China Southern Airlines, the official said.

The flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday, after losing contact with air traffic controllers off the eastern Malaysia coast

There were no reports of bad weather and no sign why the Boeing 777-200ER would have vanished from radar screens about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

"We are not ruling out any possibilities," Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference.

By the early hours of Sunday, there were no confirmed signs of the plane or any wreckage, more than 24 hours after it went missing. Operations will continue through the night, officials said.

There were no indications of sabotage nor claims of a terrorist attack. But the passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who, according to their foreign ministries, were not in fact on the plane.

A foreign ministry spokesman in Vienna said: "Our embassy got the information that there was an Austrian on board. That was the passenger list from Malaysia Airlines. Our system came back with a note that this is a stolen passport."

Austrian police had found the man safe at home. The passport was stolen two years ago while he was travelling in Thailand, the spokesman said.

The foreign ministry in Rome said no Italian was on the plane either, despite the inclusion of Maraldi's name on the list. His mother, Renata Lucchi, told Reuters his passport was lost, presumed stolen, in Thailand in 2013.

The 11-year-old Boeing, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. (1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and was apparently flying in good weather conditions when it went missing without a distress call.

A crash, if confirmed, would likely mark the U.S.-built airliner's deadliest incident since entering service 19 years ago. It would also be the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year.

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180.

Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.

US sends team to investigate Malaysia Airlines Crash

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Saturday it has dispatched a team to Asia to help investigate the crash of a Malaysia Airlines jet early Saturday that is presumed to have claimed 239 lives.

The NTSB team is accompanied by technical advisers from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. air safety regulator and Boeing Co, which made the 777-200ER jet that was lost while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"Once the aircraft location is identified, International Civil Aviation Organization protocols will determine which country will lead the investigation," the NTSB said.

Because of the travel time to Asia, the team departed from the United States on Saturday night so it could be in place to assist without delay, the NTSB said.



Search and rescue

Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having apparently reached its initial cruise altitude of 35,000 feet.

"Such a sudden disappearance would suggest either that something is happening so quickly that there is no opportunity to put out a mayday, in which case a deliberate act is one possibility to consider, or that the crew is busy coping with what whatever has taken place," he told Reuters.

He said it was too early to speculate on the causes.

A large number of planes and ships from several countries were scouring the area where the plane last made contact, about halfway between Malaysia and the southern tip of Vietnam.

"The search and rescue operations will continue as long as necessary," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters. He said his country had deployed 15 air force aircraft, six navy ships and three coast guard vessels.

Search and rescue vessels from the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency reached the area where the plane last made contact but saw no sign of wreckage, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said.

Vietnam said its rescue planes had spotted two large oil slicks, about 15 km (9 miles) long, and a column of smoke off its coastline, but it was not clear if they were connected to the missing plane.

China and the Philippines also sent ships to the region to help, while the United States, the Philippines and Singapore dispatched military planes. China has also put other ships and aircraft on standby, said Transport Minister Yang Chuantang.

No distress call

The disappearance of the plane is 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 and wreckage was found only two days later.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, CEO Yahya said.

Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 feet and was still climbing when it vanished from the site's tracking records a minute later.

John Goglia, a former board member of the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. agency that investigates plane crashes, said the lack of a distress call suggested that the plane either experienced an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device.

"It had to be quick because there was no communication," Goglia said.

He said the false identities of the two passengers strongly suggested the possibility of a bomb.

"That's a big red flag," he said.

If there were passengers on board with stolen passports, it was not clear how they passed through security checks.

International police body Interpol maintains a database of more than 39 million travel documents reported lost or stolen by 166 countries, and says on its website that this enables police, immigration or border control officers to check the validity of a suspect document within seconds. No comment was immediately available from the organisation.

Relatives angry

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing that China was "extremely worried" about the fate of the plane and those on board.

The airline said people of 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

Chinese relatives of passengers angrily accused the airline of keeping them in the dark, while state media criticised the carrier's response as poor.

"There's no one from the company here, we can't find a single person. They've just shut us in this room and told us to wait," said one middle-aged man at a hotel near Beijing airport where the relatives were taken.

"We want someone to show their face. They haven't even given us the passenger list," he said.

Another relative, trying to evade a throng of reporters, muttered: "They're treating us worse than dogs."

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Airlines told passengers' next of kin to come to the international airport with their passports to prepare to fly to the crash site, once it was identified.

About 20-30 families were being kept in a holding room at the airport, where they were being guarded by security officials and kept away from reporters.

Malaysia Airlines has one of the best safety records among full-service carriers in the Asia-Pacific region.

It identified the pilot of MH370 as Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian who joined the carrier in 1981 and has 18,365 hours of flight experience.