A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 people has lost contact with air traffic control and was still missing two hours after it was supposed to have landed in Beijing, the airline said Saturday morning.While it may be a safe assumption that a missing plane is a crashed plane, no officials are at that point yet. As a matter of fact, the airplane vanished from radar over airspace controlled by Vietnam. Malaysia Airline's vice president actually said "we have no idea what happened to this plane."
The airline told NBC News that a search-and-rescue mission was under way for Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200, but it said it had no further information.
The flight from Kuala Lumpur, carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, had been scheduled to land at 6:30 a.m. in Beijing (5:30 p.m. ET Friday).
Boeing told CNBC it was aware of the report and was monitoring the situation.
According to reports, at the time of the disappearance the plane had 7.5 hours of fuel.
The apparent route of the airliner is over land.
Commentators on cable news are proclaiming that it appears the plane has vanished in thin air..
The plane was at an altitude of 35,000 feet. The pilot had reported nothing as far as problems..
The plane vanished two hours into flight..
At this point, FOX NEWS, CNN and MSNBC are running their typical Friday night television, ignoring the breaking news event. The story obtained 'breaking news' status on CNN until 10pm EDT when the network switched to a pretaped special on Pistorius..
To the internet the world goes! It's where we get the news.
DEVELOPING..