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MH370 search: Transcript reveals moment air traffic control realise aircraft has gone missing

The plane disappeared two years ago with all 239 people on board 

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
Tuesday 08 March 2016 09:21 EST
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The last contact with the Boeing 777 MH370 took place at 1.19am, local time
The last contact with the Boeing 777 MH370 took place at 1.19am, local time (Reuters)

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A newly released transcript has revealed the moment air traffic control staff realised Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared - two years after the plane went missing with 239 people on board.

The Malaysian government issued a progress report on the continued mystery surrounding the plane, as relatives marked the second anniversary of the the day their loved ones went missing without a trace.

The report includes a transcript, according to the Daily Mail, of the conversation between the Vietnamese air traffic control supervisor and his equivalent in Kuala Lumpur, establishing that the last position the plane was known to have been in was over the South China Sea.

The Vietnamese air traffic controller in Ho Chi Minh City admits his station does not have “the contact I [have] just seen on the radar [for] three five zero".

The air traffic controller in Kuala Lumpur responds by asking: “The aircraft disappear from the screen so you you you try to contact through relay by another aircraft?”

The controller in Ho Chi Minh City replies: “Yeah, yeah, sure, all frequencies we have and and all aircraft but no response.”

The search for the missing plane across the Southern Indian Ocean will have covered 120,000 sq km by the time it comes to an end in June this year, though the families of those who disappeared on the flight have requested the search be extended until the aircraft is found.

It comes after a second piece of debris believed to be from the aircraft was found on Reunion Island off Madagascar, by the same man who found a flaperon belonging to the plane a year previously on almost the exact same spot.

The piece, which has been sent for examination, was discovered days after an American woman found a metre-long white chunk of metal that could also have been part of the plane in Mozambique, which also has a coastline on the Indian Ocean.

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