SEPANG, March 8 — There has yet to be any evidence pointing to the possibility of a technical failure on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said today.

Jauhari said the aircraft, a Boeing B777-200 plane, has been operational for 11 years and 10 months and was carrying enough fuel to last up till 8.30am this morning.

“Until there is evidence of technical failure, but it’s still early, the manufacturer has to determine that,” he told a press conference at the Sama-Sama Hotel in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).

He added that based on checks by MAS, there was no bad weather during the time of MH370’s flight.

The plane carrying 239 passengers, including 12 crew members, departed KLIA for Beijing at 12.41pm and disappeared from radar some 120 nautical miles off Kota Baru some two hours later.

Unconfirmed news reports have been streaming in since then on social media sites like Twitter, some claiming that the plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Nanning, China, while others said the plane could have crashed somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Some reports have also claimed that search and rescue officials from Vietnam received a distress signal from the plane.

MAS has yet to confirm any of the reports.

“We have contacted both, the Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities, because the area where we last had radar contact was the border of the Malaysian airspace and Vietnamese control,” Jauhari said at the press conference.

He added that MAS is also setting up a response centre in Beijing.