Last Updated: 20.58

A Malaysian Airlines flight with 239 people on board has gone missing. Search crews have arrived at the area where the Boeing 777-200ER last made contact. There was no distress signal issued.

Two large oil slicks, thought to be from a missing Malaysian Airlines plane, have been found. The slicks - off the southern tip of Vietnam - are both up to nine miles wide.

There were no reports of bad weather in the area where contact was last made with air traffic controllers, some 120 miles off the Malaysian coast.

Two passengers are known to have been traveling on stolen passports.

Retired pilot Alastair Rosenschein says a few scenarios could explain the mystery:

Malaysian Airlines has one of the best safety records of airlines in the south-east Asia region.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said Malaysian authorities have not confirmed the flight has crashed.

Reuters reports that Hishamuddin has said there has been no wreckage found, and denied Vietnamese media claims that the plane had crashed off Vietnam’s southern coast.

"We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane.

We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed," Hishamuddin told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

"We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side."

A navy official in Vietnam had claimed the plane had crashed off the southern coast of Vietnam - although Vietnamese Admiral Ngo Van Phat later clarified that he was speaking about the location of a presumed crash site based on the plane’s flight path. The Malaysian Transport Minister denied the claims that a crash had been confirmed.

Chief executive of Malaysia Airlines Ahmad Jauhari Yahya says he's still waiting for confirmation from search and rescue crews.