KUALA LUMPUR/HANOI, March 8 (Reuters): A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and was presumed to have crashed. There were no reports of bad weather and no sign why the Boeing 777-200ER, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent (RR.L: Quote, Profile, Research) engines, would have vanished from radar screens about an hour after take-off. By nightfall in the region, there were no signs of the plane or any wreckage, some 17 hours after it went missing. A large number of planes and ships from several countries were scouring the area where the plane last made contact, about halfway between Malaysia and the southern tip of Vietnam.
