Fears 239 may have died in air crash as Boeing 777 mysteriously vanishes over Vietnam two hours after taking off from Malaysia
· Vietnamese Navy reports picking up emergency signal from plane 153 miles out to sea
· Flight MH370 declared missing nearly 90 minutes after it was due to land
· Passengers and crew from France, Canada, Australia and China among the missing
· Two babies, from China and the U.S., are among the missing
A major search has been launched for a Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 people on board that is feared to have crashed after it lost contact flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Airline officials admitted they were concerned for the safety of the aircraft, which was carrying four Americans, two Canadians and seven Australians, as well as passengers from France, China and Malaysia.
The Vietnamese Navy confirmed that it had picked up the aircraft's emergency locator signal, which was coming the sea, 153 miles south of Phu Quoc island.
Vietnamese navy vessels were sailing to an area south of the Vietnamese Island of Phu Quoc after radar scans reportedly showed the Malaysian jet crashing there.
Admiral Ngo Van Phat told the Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre that radar showed the aircraft had crashed into the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam, close to the border with Cambodia.
It was hoped the naval ships, along with other vessels, would be able to reach the area before darkness fell, to increase the chances of finding any survivors or wreckage.
The signal picked up by the Navy is believed to be the Emergency Locator Transmittor, which can be activated manually by the flight crew or automatically upon impact.
Crying relatives of Chinese passengers on board the plane wept at Beijing airport earlier today as it became clear the jet had probably crashed.
An unconfirmed report on a flight tracking website said the aircraft had plunged 650ft and changed course shortly before all contact was lost.
The route would have taken flight MH370, a B777-200 aircraft, across the Malaysian mainland in a north-easterly direction and then across the Gulf of Thailand.
Those on the flight included an American baby and a Chinese baby, and 12 crew members, Malaysian Airlines said in a statement, adding it was working with all authorities in the region and search and rescue teams had been mobilized.
The aircraft had been due to land in Beijing at 6.30am local time but at 7.54am the airline issued a statement saying it had not landed and was officially missing.
On board were 153 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians, seven Australians, three French, four Americans, two each from New Zealand, Canada and Ukraine, and one each from Russia, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria.
The pilot of the passenger plane is Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysia who joined the airline in 1981.
His co-pilot was 27-year-old First Officer Fariq Ab. Hamid, also from Malaysia, who joined the airline in 2007.
If the aircraft has crashed, and all the passengers and crew are killed, it would the deadliest aviation incident since November 2001.
In that incident, 265 people died after an American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed in Belle Harbor, Queens, after leaving JFK Airport in New York. The deaths included five people on the ground.
MAS Operations Control Vice President Fuad Sharuji said: 'We tried to call this aircraft through various means,' adding that it was carrying fuel for 7.5 hours when it disappeared.
Lai Xuan Thanh, director of Vietnam's civil aviation authority, said the plane was over the sea and bound for Vietnamese airspace but air traffic officials in the country were never able to make contact.
The plane 'lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam's air traffic control,' Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement issued by the government.
More than 10 hours after last contact, officials from several countries were struggling to locate the plane.
All countries in the possible flight path of the missing aircraft were performing a 'communications and radio search', John Andrews, deputy chief of the Philippines' civil aviation agency, said.
Xinhua said China has sent two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help in the search and rescue efforts.
'It couldn't possibly be in the air because it would have run out of oil by now,' Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst at S&P Capital IQ, said.
'It's either on the ground somewhere, intact, or possibly it has gone down in the water.'
Aviation experts said that if the report of the aircraft suddenly plunging was correct it could be due to a number of factors.
These include a catastrophic engine failure; the pilots taking evasive action to avoid another aircraft; or an explosion.
The airline has not said whether the pilots were able to issue a distress call - but if they did not, experts said this could indicate a catastrophy that had occurred without warning.
At Beijing's airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather to a hotel about 15km from the airport to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service.
A woman wept on the shuttle bus while saying on a mobile phone: 'They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good.'
A waiting area for family and friends was also set up at the Kuala Lumpur airport the flight had left from.
Fuad Sharuji, Malaysian Airlines' vice president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 35,000ft and that the pilots had reported no problem with the aircraft.
The Boeing jet lost contact with Malaysian air traffic controllers a little over two hours into its flight.
Reports from China's Xinhua news agency said later that the aircraft was lost in air space controlled by Vietnam and did not enter Chinese airspace or make any contact with Chinese controllers.
'Our team is currently calling the next of kin of passengers and crew,' the airline's chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said as the airline issued a statement saying its 'thoughts and prayers' were with all those on board as well as their families.
Finding planes that disappear over the ocean can be difficult. Airliner 'black boxes' - the flight data and cockpit voice recorders - are equipped with 'pingers' that emit ultrasonic signals that can be detected underwater.
Under good conditions, the signals can be detected from several hundred miles away, John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said.
If the boxes are trapped inside the wreckage, the sound may not travel as far, he said. If the boxes are in an underwater trench, that also hinders how far the sound can travel. The signals also weaken over time.
Unconfirmed reports said it was believed the missing aircraft was involved in a crash in August 2012 when it damaged the tail of a China Eastern Airlines plane at Shanghai Pudong Airport.
The reports said that in that incident the tip of the wing of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 broke off.
Retired American Airlines captain Jim Tilmon told CNN that 'it doesn't sound very good,' as the search continued for the missing jet.
'The route is mostly overland, which means there would be plenty of radars and radios to contact the plane.
'I've been trying to come up with every scenario that I could just to explain this away, but I haven't been very successful.'
Mr Tilmon said the jet was 'about as sophisticated as any commercial airplane could possibly be.'
DAILY MAIL
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