KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam - Malaysia Airlines said it was "fearing the worst" on Sunday for a plane carrying 239 people that went missing more than 24 hours ago, as the government investigated four passengers who may have held false identity documents. A terrorist attack was one of the possibilities being investigated by Malaysian authorities with help from some foreign governments, though they stressed the priority at the moment was finding the plane.
And, in a development that deepened the mystery surrounding the jetliner, military officers said Sunday Flight MH370 may have turned back from its scheduled route before vanishing from radar screens.
More than 36 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, officials said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who may have been using false identity documents.
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.
"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realized there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.
There were no reports of bad weather and no sign of why Flight MH370 would have vanished from radar screens off the coast of Vietnam about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing early on Saturday morning.
Stolen EU passportsEarlier Sunday, European officials said it appeared two people on board were using stolen passports and Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers.
"All the four names are with me," said Hishamuddin, who is also defense minister. "I have indicated to our intelligence agencies and I have also spoken to international intelligence agencies for assistance."
He said help was also being sought from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.
"We are looking at all possibilities," he said. "We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane."
The Chinese official Xiamen Daily reported that one of the passengers who was supposed to be on the flight, according to the manifest, was at home in China. The name on the passport and the passport number did not match, according to the newspaper.
It was not immediately clear if the Chinese person's identity was among those being investigated.
There were no confirmed signs of the plane or any wreckage on Sunday, well over 24 hours after it went missing. Search operations continued through the night, officials said.
"In fearing for the worst, a disaster recovery management specialist from Atlanta, USA, will be assisting Malaysia Airlines in this crucial time," the airline said in a statement.
Stolen passportsVietnamese naval boats sent from the holiday island of Phu Quoc patrolled stretches of the Gulf of Thailand, searching for any wreckage, scouring the area where an oil slick was spotted by patrol jets just before nightfall on Saturday.
"Our two rescue boats have approached the two oil spills since 3 a.m. today but we haven't found any sign of the Malaysian plane yet. Other boats are ready to go to support if needed," Admiral Ngo Van Phat told Reuters.
There were no indications of sabotage nor claims of an 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 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.
U.S. and European security officials said that there was no proof of foul play and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports.
A Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigation said the passengers being checked had all bought their tickets through China Southern Airlines, which was code-sharing the flight with Malaysia Airlines, the official said.
Passengers on board the flight included 20 employees of Austin, Texas-based chip maker Freescale Semiconductor Ltd. Twelve of the employees were from Malaysia and eight from China, the company said in a statement.
No maydayThe 11-year-old Boeing 777-200ER, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. (11.40 a.m. ET Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport when it went missing without a distress call. Aboard were 227 passengers and 12 crew.
Flight MH370 last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 ft and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records.
A crash would likely mark the 777's second fatal incident in less than a year, and its deadliest since entering service 19 years ago. 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.
Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having reached initial cruise altitude.
"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.
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 coastguard vessels.
Besides the Vietnamese vessels, China and the Philippines also sent ships to the region to help, while the United States, the Philippines and Singapore dispatched military planes. China also put other ships and aircraft on standby.
'Big red flag'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.
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 was "a big red flag".
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 organization.
2 Europeans with stolen passports surprisedTwo passengers on a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft that went missing in Asia with 239 people on board appeared to have been travelling on stolen EU passports, it emerged Saturday.
An Austrian, named in reports as Christian Kozel, 30, had his passport pinched in Thailand in 2012, while Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, had his stolen last year, also in Thailand, officials and sources said.
Despite their names being on the passenger manifest, neither man was on flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went missing without sending a distress signal early on Saturday somewhere between Malaysia's east coast and southern Vietnam.
Maraldi phoned from Thailand to his family in Cesena in northeastern Italy after seeing on the news that he was listed as being on the vanished airliner, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Austrian authorities tracked down Kozel after being told by the airline he was on the passenger list. He is "safe and sound" in Austria, Martin Weiss, a spokesman for the Austrian foreign ministry told AFP.
Weiss declined to comment on whether Vienna had been contacted by intelligence services for more information.
"At this point we have just looked at this from a consular point of view, on whether an Austrian is among the possible victims," Weiss said.
"Anything else that comes now is for the security organizations of this world if they want to look at this from a different angle ... We could not comment on this."
In Washington, a US administration official said authorities were aware of the reporting of the two stolen passports.
"We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it's still very early and that's by no means definitive. We're still tracking the situation," the official said.
Maraldi had managed to phone his father and reassure him he was safe before his family saw the news back home in Italy.
"I turned on (rolling television news channel) RAI News24 and I saw what had happened. Thankfully, everything is okay. Luigi is on holiday, he's coming home in three weeks," the father told Ansa.
Last to know were the police officers who knocked on the door of the Maraldi family home in Cesena in north-eastern Italy, fully expecting to impart some tragic news.
"We were prepared for the worst. It's never nice to have to go and tell people something like this," police inspector Paolo Campana told ANSA.
No trace had been found of the Boeing 777-200 by nightfall Saturday but Vietnam said its search planes spotted large oil slicks in the sea, in the first hint at its possible fate.
source: interaksyon.com
