Malaysian airliner vanishes with 239 people on board

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A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, carrying 239 people lost contact over the South China Sea early on Saturday morning on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

International aviation authorities still hadn't located the aircraft several hours later.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Yahya said at a news conference that Flight MH370 lost contact with Malaysian air traffic control about two hours after it had taken off from Kuala Lumpur. .

A Vietnamese search and rescue official says the last signal from the plane detected by the aviation authority was 120 nautical miles southwest of Vietnam's southernmost Ca Mau province.

Vietnam's civil aviation authority says the Boeing was over the sea and bound for Vietnamese airspace, but air traffic officials in the country were never able to make contact.

More than 10 hours after the last contact, officials from several countries were struggling to locate the plane, which carried passengers from at least 14 countries, mostly from Asia but also from the U.S. and Europe.