Four military search planes have been dispatched to try to determine whether two large objects bobbing in a remote part of the Indian Ocean are debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.

Even before someone at the controls calmly said the last words heard from the missing Malaysian jetliner, one of the Boeing 777’s communications systems had already been disabled, authorities said yesterday, adding to suspicions that one or both of the pilots were involved in the disappearance of the flight.

It is not yet known if stolen passports played any part in the disappearance of a plane en route to Beijing, but such oversights are not new, writes Jamey Keaten

Vietnamese authorities said today they detected the last signal from a missing Malaysia Airlines flight off Vietnam's south-west coast over the South China Sea.

An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 102 people disappeared in stormy weather today, and rescue teams were sent to search an area where military aviation officials feared the Boeing 737-400 aircraft may have crashed.

Rescue teams were dispatched after a commercial Adam Air passenger plane with more than 100 people on board sent out a distress signal while flying in bad weather in Indonesia, the transport minister said today.

A commercial Adam Air passenger plane lost contact with flight controllers today as it flew between Indonesia's Java and Sulawesi islands, the company's chief executive said.