KUALA LUMPUR - The Vietnamese government said its search team has reported sighting of oil slicks that could be from the jet engines of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane, as several nations searched waters off Southeast Asia on Saturday after the jet carrying 239 passengers disappeared.
Search pilots spotted two possible oil slicks, each 10 to 15km in length and about 140km south of Tho Chu island off southern Vietnam, according to a statement on the Vietnamese government website.
An official of the Vietnam's State Search and Rescue Commission has earlier said a filmy substance that appeared to be oil was spotted on water surface over a stretch of about 20 km, Xinhua reported.
The missing flight was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members from 14 nations, Malaysian Airlines said.
Frustrated officials and passengers' families struggled to make sense of the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 which - like the Malaysian national carrier - has a solid safety record.
The plane's disappearance triggered a search effort involving vessels from several nations with rival maritime claims in the tense South China Sea.
China, which had 153 of its nationals on the plane, said it ordered maritime patrol vessels to begin scouring the area.
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines said they threw aircraft and vessels into the effort, and Singapore dispatched an air force C130 transport plane to the region.
Malaysian premier Najib Razak said the US navy also had agreed to send planes to help.
Overlapping claims to the South China Sea, a resource-rich, vital shipping lane, have been a growing source of friction between China and its neighbours."
This is the WORST nightmare any travellers' family and friends can get. That the plane they are flying in went MISSING!!
I got the breaking news early this morning when I woke up. I had been tracking the news and hoping that it went missing for a while and NOTHING serious happened. It STILL has not been confirmed that the plane had crashed, so there is still hope.
Lessons for me are:
1. as I have said and reiterated many times in the past, when you climb on board a plane, you leave it to the pilots, the airline company and fate to take care of things. The pilots to be trained and disciplined and professional in their approach to flying a plane that carry upward of hundred to two hundred plus passengers' lives. The airline company for maintaining their planes at the best flying conditions and fate to decide the 'final' outcome;
2. this plane carried many nationalities. I read the passengers list and it read like a UN list. As it STILL has not been confirmed as an air crash, hopefully they will be safe somehow. People from different places, different cultures, different walks of life and different aspirations were brought together in one plane. Now their fate is ONE. Hopefully, nothing had happened;
3. if the worst had happened, what can anyone do? Nothing very much except to pick up the pieces and move on, somehow. Air disaster investigation will take many years and lots and lots of efforts to piece together things. In the meantime, people will still take to the sky and travelling the world. Whatever precautions that can be taken by the airlines and the aviation authorities, I am sure they will make that effort to prevent, if it did crashed, anything like this from happening again.
I rest with the hope that I can re-write this piece tomorrow with some good news.
Search pilots spotted two possible oil slicks, each 10 to 15km in length and about 140km south of Tho Chu island off southern Vietnam, according to a statement on the Vietnamese government website.
An official of the Vietnam's State Search and Rescue Commission has earlier said a filmy substance that appeared to be oil was spotted on water surface over a stretch of about 20 km, Xinhua reported.
The missing flight was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members from 14 nations, Malaysian Airlines said.
Frustrated officials and passengers' families struggled to make sense of the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 which - like the Malaysian national carrier - has a solid safety record.
The plane's disappearance triggered a search effort involving vessels from several nations with rival maritime claims in the tense South China Sea.
China, which had 153 of its nationals on the plane, said it ordered maritime patrol vessels to begin scouring the area.
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines said they threw aircraft and vessels into the effort, and Singapore dispatched an air force C130 transport plane to the region.
Malaysian premier Najib Razak said the US navy also had agreed to send planes to help.
Overlapping claims to the South China Sea, a resource-rich, vital shipping lane, have been a growing source of friction between China and its neighbours."
This is the WORST nightmare any travellers' family and friends can get. That the plane they are flying in went MISSING!!
I got the breaking news early this morning when I woke up. I had been tracking the news and hoping that it went missing for a while and NOTHING serious happened. It STILL has not been confirmed that the plane had crashed, so there is still hope.
Lessons for me are:
1. as I have said and reiterated many times in the past, when you climb on board a plane, you leave it to the pilots, the airline company and fate to take care of things. The pilots to be trained and disciplined and professional in their approach to flying a plane that carry upward of hundred to two hundred plus passengers' lives. The airline company for maintaining their planes at the best flying conditions and fate to decide the 'final' outcome;
2. this plane carried many nationalities. I read the passengers list and it read like a UN list. As it STILL has not been confirmed as an air crash, hopefully they will be safe somehow. People from different places, different cultures, different walks of life and different aspirations were brought together in one plane. Now their fate is ONE. Hopefully, nothing had happened;
3. if the worst had happened, what can anyone do? Nothing very much except to pick up the pieces and move on, somehow. Air disaster investigation will take many years and lots and lots of efforts to piece together things. In the meantime, people will still take to the sky and travelling the world. Whatever precautions that can be taken by the airlines and the aviation authorities, I am sure they will make that effort to prevent, if it did crashed, anything like this from happening again.
I rest with the hope that I can re-write this piece tomorrow with some good news.
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