A Malaysia Airlines flight with 227 passengers on board has gone missing - and a search and rescue team has been deployed to locate the aircraft, a spokeswoman has confirmed to ABC News.

The Beijing-bound flight departed Kuala Lumpur at 12:55 a.m., and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., the airline said. It went missing two hours into the flight.

The State Department says that it cannot confirm whether there are Americans on board.

The airline said there are 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 777-200 aircraft.

"We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts with flight MH370," the airline's chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said statement on Facebook.

"Malaysia Airlines is currently working with the authorities who have activated their Search and Rescue team to locate the aircraft," Yahya said. "Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew."

The plane's route would take the aircraft from Malaysia across to Vietnam and China. China's state news agency Xinhua reported that the plane lost communication over Vietnam with control department in Ho Chi Minh City at 1:20 a.m. The radar signal also was lost, Xinhua reported. Those reports could not be immediately confirmed.

Meanwhile, the flight information board at the airport in Beijing indicated the flight was delayed.

No families were present at the airport as an airport official wrote on a white board near the arrivals customer service desk that families of the missing passengers should go to the Lido Hotel. The notice was put up about four hours after the plane was overdue.

"Friends and families should go to the Lido Hotel for more information," Eric Yangchao, customer service representative for Beijing International Airport, told ABC News. He said a shuttle bus was ready to take people to the hotel.

While there were no families visible at the hotel, there was a growing number media there and more than a dozen police officers.

Rumours have circulated that many relatives were able to call the mobile phones of their loved ones and ‘connect’ before the call was abruptly cut off.

Other relatives say they are able to ‘see’ their relatives on a Chinese instant messaging service called QQ, which reportedly shows that they are ‘online’.

Families believe that if the mobile phones are still working, authorities could use GPS tracking to locate the phones and thereby find the missing plane.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/were-phantom-calls-made-by-relatives-to-missing-passengers-phones-just-a-cruel-hoax/story-fnizu68q-1226851166744

Yeah, so maybe they've just slipped into the Nth dimension. They are still there, but they are not still there.

Nth dimension = North Korea? If so - I wonder if they voted.

They did vote, and they chose.. poorly.

Or wisely, depending on what you value more.

Flight MH370 replied "All right, roger that" to a radio message from Malaysian air control, authorities said.

Investigators Suspect Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours
Engine Data Suggest Malaysia Flight Was Airborne Long After Radar Disappearance
By Andy Pasztor


U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours after it disappeared from radar. The WSJ's Jeffrey Ng talks to the head of the School of Aviation at The university of New South Wales, Jason Middletown, about the data transmitted by aircraft engines.

Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn't produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

The investigation remains fluid, and it isn't clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or sabotage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven't ruled it out.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.

In those scenarios, neither mechanical problems, pilot mistakes nor some other type of catastrophic incident caused the 250-ton plane to mysteriously vanish from radar.

...

has it been mentioned yet in this thread that they now think the plane made a U-TURN at some point? I saw that earlier tonight.
so... high-jacking?

If there was a complete loss of power is it possible the u-turn was unintentional? You know, flying blind?

they think the plane continued flying for another 3 to 4 hours after the transponder was turned off. they continued to pick up a ping of some sort from it: I think they said something about a "steady- state" signal? similar to a modem that keeps running even when you pc is off, so no locational info is received only a ping... and said they did not believe the u-turn could happen unintentionally...
look around online or tv etc- maybe there's better details on it?