Vietnam Searchers Report Spotting Plane Debris

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 9 Mar 2014 | JASON NG, GAURAV RAGHUVANSHI and JAKE MAXWELL WATTS

[mandaladon]

KUALA LUMPUR—A Vietnamese search aircraft located fragments Sunday floating in waters off southern Vietnam that are suspected of coming from a Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU 0.00% jetliner that went missing a day earlier with 239 people on board.

The fragments were believed to be a composite inner door and a piece of the tail, Vietnam's ministry of information and communication said in a posting on its website. They were located about 50 miles south-southwest of Tho Chu island.

Officials released photograph of one fragment floating in the water. Malaysia Airlines said it had received no confirmation regarding the suspected debris. Flight MH370 went missing early Saturday on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing and ships and planes scouring the waters had been unable to find it. Vietnam said earlier in the day that a Singaporean aircraft had found a yellow floating object south-southwest of Thu Chu and dispatched ships toward the area. Singapore has declined to comment.

The Vietnamese statement said that the aircraft could not land near the objects to investigate them further because of darkening conditions but would continue the identification process Monday morning.

The disappearance of the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing triggered a search and rescue operation across portions of the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea, involving the armed forces of several nations, including the United States, Malaysia, Vietnam and China.

[xone]

Big water though.