Three American citizens were aboard a Boeing 777 airplane that has gone missing in Vietnam, White House officials said on Saturday.
The airplane, operated by Malaysia Airlines, lost contact with air traffic controllers Friday night and Vietnamese officials have not been able to locate the plane since, according to The Associated Press.
{mosads}The missing airplane was traveling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China on Friday. There were 239 passengers and crew – most of whom were Chinese citizens – on board the flight when it took off.
Officials found two large oil slicks in south Vietnam on Saturday that they believe were a result of the airplane possibly crashing, according to the report.
White House officials said employees at the American embassies in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing were contacting relatives of the missing American passengers.
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told the AP that the pilots of the airplane did not send any distress signals before it fell off of air traffic control radars about an hour into its flight.
Air traffic controllers were last able to detect the airplane when it was flying over the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand at about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, according to the report.
The National Transportation Safety Board tweeted Friday night that it was “aware of reports of the loss of Malaysia MH370, a Boeing 777-200 and are monitoring the situation.”
-This post was updated at 12:51 p.m.