The Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Al-Haj Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah has expressed his sympathies to the family members of passengers and crew on board Flight MH370.

                

"I hope the families of the passengers and crew can remain calm and be brave in accepting the outcome," he said when opening the first parliamentary sitting of the year this morning.

The Malaysia Airlines aircraft went missing early Saturday morning, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

It went off the radar just off the southern coast of Vietnam at 1.30am.

An international search-and-rescue mission is underway in both the South China Sea and Malacca Straits, but no official outcome has been reported to date.

"The queen and I are very concerned about the incident regarding the MH 370 flight to Beijing on Saturday,  March 8," said the king.

The flight had 239 people on board including the crew.

Most of them are Chinese nationals, while there are 38 Malaysian nationals on board the flight.