More Details, Less Leads For Missing Plane

On Monday, the only lead officials had into the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft fizzled into nothingness after it was discovered that oil slicks in the South China Sea weren't from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. With news of stolen passports and an astonishing lack of debris, the details surrounding the disappearance of Flight MH370 just keep getting murkier and murkier.

Samples of the oil from the oil slicks spotted on the South China Sea only two days ago were sent to a lab over the weekend, and, on Monday, Malaysia’s civil aviation chief announced that the results showed that the oil hadn't come from the missing aircraft. The oil slick — basically, just a film of oil on the surface of the water — was sighted between Malaysia and Vietnam on Saturday, and was the first and only sign that the plane had indeed crashed.

“We don’t know exactly what happened to the aircraft,” the chief said late Monday, although he stated that they would continue searching with the expectation of rescuing survivors.

On Sunday, it was revealed that two of the passengers on the plane had stolen the passports of an Italian and an Austrian citizen, (both of whom reportedly had nothing to do with the flight, and had to suddenly deal with an onslaught of media outlets announcing their disappearance. Although terrorism hasn't been ruled out, the stolen documents just seem to have puzzled officials even more.

“The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,” an inside source involved in the search told Reuters.