Employees for 2 Pa. companies among missing Malaysian jet passengers

Employees for two Pennsylvania companies were among the 239 people on board the Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared over the weekend.

Chng Mei Lei and Muktesh Mukherjee are both named on a list of Flight MH370 passengers released by the airline. Authorities have been searching for the plane, and the cause of its disappearance, since it went missing on Saturday.

Chng, 33, was an engineer with Flexsys America LP in Washington County, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

A spokeswoman for Eastman Chemical Co., which purchased the western Pennsylvania company in 2012, said Chng had worked for Flexsys since 2005.

Chng was a senior process engineer, her LinkedIn page says. Spokeswoman Tracy Kilgore told the Post-Gazette her duties included "chemical process optimization and new process development."

Flexsys, which has 13 other facilities in addition to its Monongahela site, manufactures and supplies chemicals for the rubber-processing and other industries.

Mukherjee was a Beijing-based executive for XCoal Energy & Resources, a Pennsylvania coal supplier. The 42-year-old Canadian citizen's wife was also on the flight.

Ernie Thrasher, the Latrobe company's chief executive, told the New York Times that Mukherjee was "a dear friend, colleague and member of the Xcoal family."

Mukherjee's LinkedIn page lists his title as vice president of China operations.