Relatives of missing flight passengers leaving for Malaysia

The Malaysia Airlines will assist direct relatives of passengers onboard the missing flight to fly from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur Monday morning, said the airlines spokesman on Sunday.

The airlines will arrange five relatives of each passenger on the MH370 to go to Kuala Lumpur, but the first plane will only carry two direct relatives of each passenger, said Ignatius Ong Ming Choy, representative of the airlines at a press conference.

The airlines is registering the passengers' family members, while the exact departure time of Monday flight has not yet been confirmed, he added.

A Boeing 777-200 aircraft operated by Malaysia Airlines left the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:41 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday and was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., after a 3,700-km trip.

Contact with the flight was lost along with its radar signal at 1:20 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday when it was flying over the Ho Chi Minh air traffic control area in Vietnam.

The flight has 12 crew members and 227 passengers, including 154 Chinese.