Stolen Passports Add Questions to Missing Flight Search
Photo Credit: BJÖRN WYLEZICH
By CBS News.
Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirmed Saturday that names of two nationals listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand.
Also Saturday, Vietnamese air force planes spotted two large oil slicks close to where the Boeing 777 went missing earlier in the day, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people had crashed.
Neither European was on the plane, which disappeared less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, officials said. The Italian was traveling in Thailand and the Austrian was located in his native country.
In Washington, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that U.S. officials were aware of reports about the stolen passports but so far haven’t determined any nexus to terrorism.
The officials said it’s still very early in the investigation and at this point they were not aware of any threat streams connected to the event, Orr reports.
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Photo Credit: CNNSearch intensifies for Malaysian airliner and 239 people, rescue ships head to sea
By Tom Watkins and Chelsea J. Carter.
Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared Saturday after air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, the airline said.
“At the moment we have no idea where this aircraft is right now,” Malaysia Airlines Vice President of Operations Control Fuad Sharuji said on CNN’s “AC360.”
Subang Air Traffic Control lost contact with Flight MH370 at about 2:40 a.m. local time (1:40 p.m. ET Friday), Sharuji said.
“We tried to call this aircraft through various means,” he said. The airline checked reports that the jet had landed in several places, but determined that none of the reports was true, he said.
The Boeing 777-200 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 a.m. and was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., a 2,300-mile (3,700 kilometer) trip. It was carrying 227 passengers, two of them infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said.
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