I live in Saigon, but didn't hear about this until late Saturday afternoon, about 15 hours after the loss of contact. It is now Sunday afternoon and I am in my office and was able to look up some facts.
From Ca Mau, the southern most tip of Vietnam, to coast of Malaysia is about 250 nm. Apart from the 12nm territorial waters adjacent to each coast, the remaining distance is International Waters, although still within the Exclusive Economic Zone of either Malaysia or Vietnam. So the navies of both countries actively patrol these waters.
There are many oil and gas production platforms in the area, mostly on the Malaysian side of the EEZ border (about 120 nm from Ca Mau), but they would not be maintaining active lookouts. There are currently no active drilling rigs but there are probably oilfield supply vessels in the area, who might have seen something.
There will be lots of small (~10 m) wooden fishing boats actively fishing for squid at night time. Very few of them have radios and given the extremely bright lights they use, there would have to have been a fireball in the sky, for the crews to have a chance of seeing anything.
This area is geographically part of the South China Sea (although the Vietnamese never use that term - here it is the Eastern Sea), but it is more often referred to as the Gulf of Thailand, certainly in the oil industry.
There is a very naive statement on the BBC website:
Territorial disputes over the South China Sea were set aside temporarily as China dispatched two maritime rescue ships and the Philippines deployed three air force planes and three navy patrol ships.
What is happening here is that China is taking advantage of the situation to remind home audiences that the government considers the South China Sea to be "their" sea, even though in this case, the search area is well to the west of the famous "nine-dash line" that the Chinese use to base their claim (
China?s infamous ?9 dash line? map |). They are probably also hoping for a wonderful
PR coup if one of their vessels finds the wreckage or participates in the recovery operations.
The Chinese say they have "dispatched" some vessels to the scene. It is highly unlikely that they are being sent from the mainland, which is nearly a 1000 miles away. It is more likely that they have diverted these vessels from routine patrol in the South China Sea, where they often harass non-Chinese fishing and oil exploration vessels.
I have participated in Emergency Response Team drills and am very familiar with the concept of an On Scene Commander. I wonder who will assume that role in this situation? A vessel from the country in whose EEC the scene is located or the one with the biggest guns?