KUALA LUMPUR/HO CHI MINH CITY A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday, and European officials said two people on board were using false identities. 
 
 There were no reports of bad weather and no sign of why the Boeing 777-200ER would have vanished from radar screens about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. 
 
 "We are not ruling out any possibilities," Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference. 
 
 By the early hours of Sunday, there were no confirmed signs of the plane or any wreckage, well over 24 hours after it went missing. Operations will continue through the night, officials said. 
 
 There were no indications of sabotage nor claims of a terrorist attack. But the passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who, according to their foreign ministries, were not in fact on the plane. 
 
 A foreign ministry spokesman in Vienna said: "Our embassy got the information that there was an Austrian on board. That was the passenger list from Malaysia Airlines. Our system came back with a note that this is a stolen passport." 
 
 Austrian police had found the man safe at home. The passport was stolen two years ago while he was travelling in Thailand, the spokesman said. 
 
 The foreign ministry in Rome said no Italian was on the plane either, despite the inclusion of Maraldi's name on the list. His mother, Renata Lucchi, told Reuters his passport was lost, presumed stolen, in Thailand in 2013. 
 
 U.S. and European security officials said that there was no proof of any terrorist link and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports. 
 
 NO MAYDAY 
 
 The 11-year-old Boeing, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. (1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and was apparently flying in good weather conditions when it went missing without a distress call. 
 
 Flight MH370 last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 feet and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records. 
 
 A crash, if confirmed, would likely mark the 777's second fatal incident in less than a year, and its deadliest since entering service 19 years ago. An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180. 
 
 Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment. 
 
 Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having reached initial cruise altitude. 
 
 "Such a sudden disappearance would suggest either that something is happening so quickly that there is no opportunity to put out a mayday, in which case a deliberate act is one possibility to consider, or that the crew is busy coping with what whatever has taken place," he told Reuters. 
 
 He said it was too early to speculate on the causes. 
 
 A large number of planes and ships from several countries were scouring the area where the plane last made contact, about halfway between Malaysia and the southern tip of Vietnam. 
 
 "The search and rescue operations will continue as long as necessary," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters. He said his country had deployed 15 air force aircraft, six navy ships and three coast guard vessels. 
 
 Search and rescue vessels from the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency reached the area where the plane last made contact but saw no sign of wreckage, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said. 
 
 Vietnam said its rescue planes had spotted two large oil slicks, about 15 km (9 miles) long, and a column of smoke off its coastline, but it was not clear if they were connected to the missing plane. 
 
 China and the Philippines also sent ships to the region to help, while the United States, the Philippines and Singapore dispatched military planes. China also put other ships and aircraft on standby. 
 
 NO DISTRESS CALL 
 
 The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours and wreckage was found only two days later. 
 
 John Goglia, a former board member of the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. agency that investigates plane crashes, said the lack of a distress call suggested that the plane either experienced an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device. 
 
 "It had to be quick because there was no communication," Goglia said. 
 
 He said the false identities of the two passengers strongly suggested the possibility of a bomb. 
 
 "That's a big red flag," he said. 
 
 If there were passengers on board with stolen passports, it was not clear how they passed through security checks. 
 
 International police body Interpol maintains a database of more than 39 million travel documents reported lost or stolen by 166 countries, and says on its website that this enables police, immigration or border control officers to check the validity of a suspect document within seconds. No comment was immediately available from the organization. 
 
 Italian police said the passport of Luigi Maraldi was reported stolen on August 1, 2013 and was inserted in the Interpol database 
 
 RELATIVES ANGRY 
 
 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing that China was "extremely worried" about the fate of the plane and those on board. Chinese passengers' relatives angrily accused the airline of keeping them in the dark, while state media criticized the carrier's response as poor. 
 
 "There's no one from the company here, we can't find a single person. They've just shut us in this room and told us to wait," said one middle-aged man at a hotel near Beijing airport where the relatives were taken. 
 
 "We want someone to show their face. They haven't even given us the passenger list," he said. 
 
 Another relative, trying to evade a throng of reporters, muttered: "They're treating us worse than dogs." 
 
 The airline said people of 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans. 
 
 In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Airlines told passengers' next of kin to come to the international airport with their passports to prepare to fly to the crash site, once it was identified. 
 
 About 20-30 families were being kept in a holding room at the airport, where they were being guarded by security officials and kept away from reporters. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines has one of the best safety records among full-service Asia-Pacific carriers. 
 
 It identified the pilot of MH370 as Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian who joined the carrier in 1981 and has 18,365 hours of flight experience. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Stuart Grudgings and Niki Koswanage in KUALA LUMPUR, Ben Blanchard, Jonathan Standing and Natalie Thomas in BEIJING, Martin Petty in HANOI, Alwyn Scott in NEW YORK, Morag MacKinnon in PERTH, Michael Shields in VIENNA, and Naomi O'Leary in ROME, Tim Hepher in PARIS and Mark Hosenball in WASHINGTON; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall) ||||| Investigators searching for a missing Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared with 239 people on board have said all security checks were followed. 
 
 Malaysia's civil aviation chief said two passengers travelling on stolen passports - one issued by Italy and the other by Austria - were "not Asian-looking men". 
 
 Asked for a description of the pair, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman added: "Do you know a footballer by the name of (Mario) Balotelli? (This is) what he looks like. I don't want to dwell on this but the men are not Asian-looking." 
 
 Search teams are scouring vast areas of ocean for the missing flight 
 
 Mr Rahman also revealed the search area has been extended and said rescuers are responding to reports of debris floating in the sea near Hong Kong. 
 
 Meanwhile, samples of oil taken from a slick in the South China Sea came from a ship, not the missing aircraft, it has been confirmed. 
 
 It comes after a reported sighting of a life raft by the crew of a Vietnamese jet turned out to be a false alert. 
 
 Spotter planes and ships are involved in the search for the missing flight 
 
 Authorities admit they are "puzzled" by the "unprecedented" disappearance of flight MH370 mid-way between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. 
 
 Security services are investigating whether the Boeing 777-200 was hijacked or destroyed in a terror attack. 
 
 Earlier reports of debris spotted in the South China Sea, including an aircraft door, have not been confirmed, while a possible sighting of a section of the plane's tail has been ruled out. 
 
 Investigators say Vietnam has not confirmed a possible plane door sighting 
 
 Sky's Jonathan Samuels, in Beijing, said authorities have warned against giving "false hope" to relatives by reporting every sighting of debris. 
 
 "They say it's very distressing and very upsetting for families to hear there may be something like a life raft out in the ocean, only to have their hopes dashed just a short time later," he said. 
 
 The two men travelling on stolen passports bought their tickets together and were due to fly to Europe after landing in Beijing. 
 
 The plane was flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing when it vanished 
 
 Search teams are scouring two vast areas of the ocean south-west of Vietnam 
 
 Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said one of the mystery passengers had been identified as a non-resident of the country. 
 
 Officials are discussing whether images of the men should be made public as part of an appeal for information, while Interpol said additional "suspect" documents are under review. 
 
 Initial investigations suggest the plane disintegrated at about 35,000ft, according to the Reuters news agency. 
 
 Samples of oil taken from a slick did not come from the missing plane 
 
 Had the plane plunged into the sea and broken up on impact, search teams would have expected to find a concentrated pattern of debris, a source involved in the probe said. 
 
 The search, which involves teams from 10 countries, was widened after radar suggested the aircraft may have turned back before it vanished. 
 
 Rescuers have been concentrating their efforts on a 10,500 sq mile area of ocean that includes parts of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea. 
 
 Investigators have told relatives to 'prepare for the worst' 
 
 Meanwhile, relatives of those on the flight are enduring an agonising wait for information and anger is growing in China about the lack of progress with the investigation. 
 
 Nearly two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese and if the loss of the plane is confirmed, it would be the country's second-worst air disaster. 
 
 In a scathing editorial, the Global Times newspaper, which has links to the Chinese Communist Party, said: "The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities. The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough. 
 
 "There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities." 
 
 :: Watch Sky News live on television, on Sky channel 501, Virgin Media channel 602, Freeview channel 82 and Freesat channel 202. ||||| Teams from nine countries working non-stop, officials say, as hunt goes on for plane missing with 239 people on board 
 
 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. 
 
 The men who used them were of Asian appearance, Malaysia’s home minister had said late on Sunday. But Rahman said on Monday that they were of “non-Asian” appearance. 
 
 Asked by a reporter what they looked like “roughly,” he said: “Do you know of a footballer by the name of (Mario) Balotelli? He is an Italian. Do you know how he looks like?” 
 
 
 
 A reporter then asked, “Is he black?” and the aviation chief replied, “Yes.” 
 
 The passports were stolen from Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel in the last two years, and were listed as stolen on Interpol’s database. The international police agency said the documents had not been checked with its system and that it had long urged all countries to check passports systematically. 
 
 The suggestion that the plane may have turned back just before disappearing from radar screens - mooted by officials yesterday – remains unconfirmed, Rahman added. 
 
 Nine countries are now taking part in the search, which Rahman said covered the area within a 50 nautical mile radius of the aircraft’s last known position and the northern Straits of Malacca in case the plane had turned back. 
 
 “We are every hour, every minute, every second looking at every inch of the sea,” he said. 
 
 Forty ships are working round the clock, while 34 aircraft are working during daylight hours. Potential sightings of aircraft debris by Vietnamese searchers have not been verified, Rahman said. 
 
 There have been a few glimmers of hope, but so far no trace of the plane has been found. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon, a Vietnamese plane spotted a rectangular object that was thought to be one of the missing plane’s doors, but ships working through the night could not locate it. 
 
 Malaysian maritime officials found some oil slicks in the South China Sea and sent a sample to a lab to see if it came from the plane. Tests showed that the oil was not from an aircraft, Rahman said. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines said in a statement it posted today that its primary focus was caring for the families of passengers, some of whom it has already flown to Kuala Lumpur. It has also sent counsellors to Beijing as two-thirds of the travellers were Chinese. 
 
 “We appreciate the help we are receiving from all parties and agencies during this critical and difficult time...Malaysia Airlines is similarly anxious and we appreciate the patience, support and prayers from everyone,” it said. 
 
 But many of the Chinese passengers’ relatives have complained that the airline has so far given them little information or support and have chosen to stay in Beijing. 
 
 An editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper attacked the airline and authorities on Monday, warning: “The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities. The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough.” 
 
 It added: “There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities. If it is due to a deadly mechanical breakdown or pilot error, then Malaysia Airlines should take the blame. If this is a terrorist attack, then the security check at the Kuala Lumpur airport and on the flight is questionable.” ||||| KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Dozens of ships and aircraft have failed to find any piece of the missing Boeing 777 jet that vanished more than two days ago above waters south of Vietnam as investigators pursued "every angle" to explain its disappearance, including hijacking, Malaysia's civil aviation chief said Monday. 
 
 This photo provided by Laurent Errera taken Dec. 26, 2011, shows the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that disappeared from air traffic control screens Saturday, taking off from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle... (Associated Press) 
 
 A family member of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane wipes her tears at a hotel in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Monday, March 10, 2014. Vietnamese aircraft spotted what they suspected was one... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Chinese relative of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane looks out from a hotel room for relatives or friends of passengers aboard the missing airplane in Beijing, China Monday, March... (Associated Press) 
 
 This screengrab from flightradar24.com shows the last reported position of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, Friday night March 7, 2014. The Boeing 777-200 carrying 239 people lost contact over the South... (Associated Press) 
 
 Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation director general Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, right, speaks as Malaysia Airlines Group Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahyain listens during a press conference at a... (Associated Press) 
 
 Malaysian maritime officials found some oil slicks in the South China Sea and sent a sample to a lab to see if it came from the plane, the Department of Civil Aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told a news conference. 
 
 Hundreds of distraught relatives were gathered in a hotel in Beijing, waiting to be flown to Malaysia. Of the 227 passengers, two-thirds were Chinese. There were also 38 passengers and 12 crew members from Malaysia, and others from elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America, including three Americans. 
 
 "We accept God's will. Whether he is found alive or dead, we surrender to Allah," said Selamat Omar, a Malaysian whose 29-year-old son Mohamad Khairul Amri Selamat was heading to Beijing for a business trip. He said he was expecting a call from his son after the flight's scheduled arrival time at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Instead he got a call from the airline to say the plane was missing. 
 
 Vietnamese ships working throughout the night could not find a rectangular object spotted Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet. 
 
 "We have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft," Azharuddin said, adding that the search operation has involved 34 aircraft and 40 ships covering a 50-nautical mile radius from the point the plane vanished from radar screens early Saturday about one hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. 
 
 He said officials from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. National Safety Transportation Board have arrived to help in the investigation. 
 
 As hope faded for relatives of the 239 people who were aboard Flight MH370, attention focused on how two passengers managed to board the ill-fated aircraft using stolen passports. Interpol confirmed it knew about the stolen passports but said no authorities checked its vast databases on stolen documents before the jet departed 
 
 Warning that "only a handful of countries" routinely make such checks, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble chided authorities for "waiting for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates." 
 
 Still, there was no indication that the two men had anything to do with the tragedy. 
 
 Possible causes of the apparent crash include an explosion, catastrophic engine failure, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide. 
 
 Azharuddin acknowledged many theories about the plane's disappearance, including hijacking. 
 
 "We are not discounting this. We are looking at every angle but again, we have to find concrete evidence," he said. 
 
 The baggage of five passengers who had checked in to the flight but did not board the plane were removed before it departed, he said. Airport security was strict according to international standards, surveillance has been done and the airport has been audited, he said. 
 
 On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand. 
 
 "I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. "We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board." 
 
 The thefts of the two passports — one belonging to Austrian Christian Kozel and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy — were entered into Interpol's database after they were stolen in Thailand in 2012 and last year, the police body said. 
 
 Electronic booking records show that one-way tickets with those names were issued Thursday from a travel agency in the beach resort of Pattaya in eastern Thailand. A person who answered the phone at the agency said she could not comment. 
 
 But no authorities in Malaysia or elsewhere checked the passports against the database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents before the Malaysia Airlines plane took off. 
 
 A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline confirmed Sunday that passengers named Maraldi and Kozel had been booked on one-way tickets on the same KLM flight, flying from Beijing to Amsterdam on Saturday. Maraldi was to fly on to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany. She said the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines. 
 
 As holders of EU passports with onward flights to Europe, the passengers would not have needed visas for China. 
 
 The Thai national police chief on Monday set up a task force to investigate the issue of the stolen passports. 
 
 Interpol said it and national investigators were working to determine the true identities of those who used the stolen passports to board the flight. White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions. 
 
 Interpol has long sounded the alarm that growing international travel has underpinned a new market for identity theft: Bogus passports are mostly used by illegal immigrants, but also pretty much anyone looking to travel unnoticed such as drug runners or terrorists. More than 1 billion times last year, travelers boarded planes without their passports being checked against Interpol's database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents, the police agency said. 
 
 Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over a large area. If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris. 
 
 __ 
 
 Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt in Hanoi, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Didi Tang, Gillian Wong and Louise Watt in Beijing, Joan Lowy in Washington and Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed this report. ||||| Helicopters were scrambled on Monday to a floating "yellow object" that rescue teams believed could be a life raft from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane - but it turned out to be a false alarm. 
 
 Pham Quy Tieu, Vietnam's vice transport minister and deputy head of the its rescue committee, said that a search plane had initially been unable to get close enough to determine what it was. 
 
 However, officials later said it was a "moss-covered cap of a cable reel." 
 
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 The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website searches were being conducted about 90 miles southwest of Tho Chu island, which is located about 120 miles off the coast of southern Vietnam. 
 
 On Sunday, NBC News reported that no electronic "chatter" has been detected indicating any known terror group was behind the Boeing 777's mysterious disappearance. 
 
 Two passengers on board Malaysian Airlines flight were traveling on stolen passports. Both ticket holders were due to connect to a flight to Amsterdam. One of the passengers was then scheduled to head to Frankfurt with the other en route to Stockholm. 
 
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 The red-eye flight was carrying 229 people when it vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing in relatively clear weather. No distress signal was sent. 
 
 “This is an unprecedented mystery,” Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, told a news conference on Monday. 
 
 He said a hijacking had not been ruled out: “We have not narrowed down any possibilities.” 
 
 Reuters contributed to this report. ||||| Using a system that looks for flashes around the world, the Pentagon reviewed preliminary surveillance data from the area where the plane disappeared and saw no evidence of an explosion, said an American government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the subject matter is classified. A team of aviation experts led by the National Transportation Safety Board was on its way to the area. 
 
 If all aboard were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline accident since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines Airbus crashed just after takeoff from Kennedy Airport en route to the Dominican Republic. 
 
 A senior American intelligence official said law enforcement and intelligence agencies were investigating the issue of the stolen passports. American authorities were scrutinizing the flight manifest closely, the official said, noting that forged travel documents are also used routinely by smugglers and illegal immigrants. 
 
 “At this time, we have not identified this as an act of terrorism,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Saturday because of the continuing inquiry. “While the stolen passports are interesting, they don’t necessarily say to us that this was a terrorism act.” 
 
 A European counterterrorism official said the Italian man whose passport was stolen, Luigi Maraldi, 37, called his parents from Thailand, where he is vacationing, after discovering that someone by the same name was listed on the passenger manifest. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Maraldi reported the theft last August to the Italian police. The official said the passport of the Austrian man, Christian Kozel, 30, who is currently in Austria, was stolen about two years ago. 
 
 Image Oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Thailand may have been from a crash. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 
 
 The European official said that he was surprised it had been possible to check in with stolen passports at the Kuala Lumpur airport and that an alert should have popped up on the airline agent’s computer. 
 
 Operating as Flight MH370, the plane left Kuala Lumpur just after midnight, headed for Beijing. Air traffic control in Subang, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, Malaysia’s civil aviation department said. 
 
 China Central Television said that according to Chinese air traffic control officials, the aircraft never entered Chinese airspace. 
 
 At a news conference in Beijing after the arrival of a team of employees to assist families of the passengers in China, an official of Malaysia Airlines said the missing plane had no history of malfunctions. “It was last inspected 10 days ago, well before scheduled service,” said the executive, Ignatius Ong. “It was all in top condition.” 
 
 When pressed about possible security lapses, he repeated several times that the airline had no confirmation from the Malaysian authorities that passengers had boarded with stolen passports. 
 
 Image Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, addressed the media as the search for the plane continued. Credit Samsul Said/Reuters 
 
 Malaysia, the United States and Vietnam dispatched ships and aircraft to the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand on Saturday to join an intensive search, and the state-run Xinhua news agency said China was sending a Coast Guard vessel and two naval ships. The Chinese Ministry of Transport said a team of scuba divers who specialize in emergency rescues and recovery had been assembled on Hainan, the southern island-province, to prepare to go on Sunday to the area where the airliner may have gone down. 
 
 Lai Xuan Thanh, the director of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, said on Saturday that a Vietnamese Navy AN26 aircraft had discovered oil on the surface of the water toward the Vietnam side of the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, east of the Malaysian Peninsula. The oil is suspected to have come from the missing plane, he added. 
 
 But on Sunday, Malaysia’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, added a confusing twist, saying the plane might have gone down west of the Malaysian peninsula. “We are looking at the possibility of an aircraft air turnback,” he said without elaborating whether the plane might have changed course for mechanical reasons or a hijacking, or why the authorities suspected the plane might have reversed course. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines said the plane had 227 passengers aboard, including two toddlers, and an all-Malaysian crew of 12. According to the manifest, the passengers included 154 citizens of China or Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans, as well as two citizens each from Canada, New Zealand and Ukraine and one each from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia — although the true nationalities of the passengers carrying the Austrian and Italian passports are still unknown. 
 
 The family of one of the Americans aboard the flight, Philip Wood, an IBM employee in Kuala Lumpur, said they had little information beyond what had been reported in the news media. 
 
 Image A distraught couple at the Beijing Capital International Airport wait for news about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters 
 
 “We’re relying on our Lord,” Mr. Wood’s father, Aubrey, said from his home in Keller, Tex. “He’s the one who carries the load.” 
 
 The tickets to the holders of the stolen Austrian and Italian passports were sold by China Southern Airlines, which has a code share agreement with Malaysia Airlines, according to China Southern’s account on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblog platform. China Southern said it sold five other tickets to the flight: to the Dutch passenger, the Ukrainians, and one Malaysian and one Chinese passenger. 
 
 Arnold Barnett, a longtime Massachusetts Institute of Technology specialist in aviation safety statistics, said that before the disappearance of the plane, Malaysia Airlines had suffered two fatal crashes, in 1977 and 1995. Based on his estimate that Malaysia Airlines operates roughly 120,000 flights a year, he calculated that the airline’s safety record was consistent with that of airlines in other fairly prosperous, middle-income countries, but had not yet reached the better safety record of airlines based in the world’s richest countries. 
 
 Malaysia has not been targeted in terrorist attacks in recent decades, although the 1977 crash was attributed to a hijacking. But some of the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States was done in Malaysia, which has a relatively lax visa policy. The country is a major trading nation and a natural meeting place for a variety of groups involved in illicit activities. 
 
 The plane’s disappearance came at the end of the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing, and took place at a time of rising concern in China about terrorism. Mr. Ahmad Jauhari of Malaysia Airlines said early on in a statement that there was speculation that the plane had landed safely somewhere along the route to Beijing. But in a telephone interview before reporting the sighting of the oil in the ocean, Mr. Lai expressed concern about the aircraft’s fate. 
 
 “The possibility of an accident is high,” he said.
– The fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight and the 239 onboard continues to stump officials. Authorities are considering every possible explanation for the disappearance, says Malaysia's civil aviation boss, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman. Among those explanations are engine failure, pilot error, or possibly suicide. But so far, searches have yielded little information—even with 40 ships and 34 aircraft investigating a radius of 50 nautical miles around where the plane dropped off radar screens, the AP reports. Nine countries are involved in the search, and they're working "every hour, every minute, every second," Rahman adds, per the Guardian. It's now after dark in the area, and the search will resume tomorrow. In other search news: As for hijacking, "we are not discounting this," says Rahman, via the AP. Malaysia says it has CCTV visuals of two people traveling with stolen passports. Officials said today at a news conference that the two were not "Asian-looking people," as per the BBC. One-way tickets under the names on the stolen passports—Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel—were issued at a Thai travel agency. Passengers traveling under those names were also booked on a one-way flight from Beijing to Amsterdam Saturday, says a rep for Royal Dutch Airlines. Maraldi was then due to fly to Copenhagen, while Kozel was set to go to Frankfurt, Germany. Malaysia is now downplaying reports suggesting Vietnam had discovered possible debris. "We have not found anything that appear to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," says Rahman, per CNN. Officials had believed they'd spotted a life raft in the water, and helicopters were rushed to the spot—only to find a "moss-covered cap of a cable reel," NBC News reports. Meanwhile, oil slicks discovered in the South China Sea are not connected to the aircraft, Sky News confirms via AFP.