Flight MH370: Plane Missing Mystery

Flight MH370: officials 'puzzled' by Malaysia mystery as search widens

Teams from nine countries working non-stop, officials say, as hunt goes on for plane missing with 239 people on board 

Follow events live as the search for flight MH370 continues

A relative of a passenger on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 waits for news in Beijing on Monday. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Search crews involving nine countries are working “every hour, every minute, every second” across a huge swathe of the South China Sea but have yet to find any evidence of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, the country’s civil aviation chief said on Monday.

Almost 60 hours after flight MH370 vanished from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday officials remain “puzzled” by its sudden disappearance and are considering all possible angles, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said.

“Unfortunately, we have not found anything that appears to be an object from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” he said.

The Beijing-bound flight was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it went missing around 40 minutes after its 12.41am take-off from Kuala Lumpur, over the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam. The Boeing-777 was cruising at 35,000 feet when it disappeared in apparently good weather, gave no indication of any problems and did not issue a distress call.

Rahman added: “There are many theories that have been said in the media; many experts around the world have contributed their expertise and knowledge about what could happen, what happened....We are puzzled as well.

“To confirm what happened on that particular day on this ill-fated aircraft...we need concrete evidence, parts of the aircraft for us to analyse, for us to do forensic study.”

He said that the government had not discounted speculation about a hijack, but was looking at every possible explanation, noting that it took two years to determine the cause of the 2009 Air France crash.

He confirmed that five passengers had checked in for the flight but not boarded, adding that their baggage was removed from the aircraft as necessary in such cases.

Concerns that terrorist might be responsible have been fuelled by the fact two passengers were travelling on stolen European passports - although experts have said that fraudulent documents are reasonably common on regional flights for a variety of reasons.