Many mysteries-few clues in hunt for missing Malaysia jet

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A US Navy helicopter lands aboard Destroyer USS Pinckney before returning to a search and rescue mission for the missing Malaysian airlines flight MH370 in the Gulf of Thailand, Sunday, March 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Navy Media Content Service, Senior Chief Petty Officer Chris D. Boardman)

The lost Malaysia Airlines flight and the 239 folk onboard continues to be a mystery. Authorities in several countries are pondering every possible explanation for the disappearance, says Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s civil aviation boss.

Among those explanations are pilot error, engine failure, and even suicide. So far, however, 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 Newsreports.
Meanwhile, oil slicks discovered in the South China Sea are not connected to the aircraft, Sky News confirms via AFP.

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