Missing Malaysia aircraft may have ‘turned back’

As the search for the Malaysia Airlines fight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew intensified, Malaysian authorities announced that they were now investigating the possibility that the plane had turned back before disappearing, reports say.

Malaysian aviation officials said radar displays indicated the plane could have turned around and are now widening the search area accordingly.

The Boeing 777-200ER flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had been missing for hours when Vietnam's Tuoi Tre news quoted Admiral Ngo Van Phat as saying he had asked boats from an island off south Vietnam to rush to the crash site.

If the report is confirmed, it would mark the US-built airliner's deadliest crash since entering service 19 years ago, the Reuters news agency reported. Malaysia Airlines had yet to confirm that the aircraft had crashed.

Entering into its second day, the search will now be extended to the west coast of Malaysia.

No weather problems had been reported in the area before the plane dropped out of contact, and the pilots did not send a distress signal - something that has been highlighted by experts as unusual for a modern jetliner.

There was still no confirmed sighting of wreckage from the Boeing 777 in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam where it vanished from screens early Saturday morning en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

The flight was carrying 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians and seven Australians among the 227 passengers, the airline said on Saturday. An additional 12 crew members were on board.

There were also three US citizens, three from France, two passengers each from New Zealand, Ukraine, and Canada, and one each from Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria, the airline said in a statement.