An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar with 66 people on board, the airline says

An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar with 66 people on board, the airline says

The Airbus A320 went missing over the eastern Mediterranean, soon after entering Egyptian airspace

EgyptAir says it received a distress signal before the plane disappeared from radar

There were 56 passengers - including three children - seven crew members and three security personnel on board Flight MS804, the airline said

The airline said the passengers included 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, one Briton, two Iraqis, as well as people from Canada, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Chad and Portugal

Flight MS804 left Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport at 23:09 local time on Wednesday (21:09 GMT) and was scheduled to arrive in the Egyptian capital soon after 03:00 local time on Thursday

It was flying at 37,000ft (11,300m) over the eastern Mediterranean when contact was lost, at 02:45 Cairo time (00:45 GMT)

The Greek authorities joined Egyptian armed forces in the search operation

Earlier an airport official, quoted by Egypt’s state-run newspaper al-Ahram, said the last contact with the plane had been 10 minutes before it disappeared - and no distress signal had been sent

But EgyptAir tweeted (in Arabic) that a distress signal was sent from the plane’s emergency devices

Flightradar24 listed details of the plane’s journey on Wednesday which showed it had flown from Asmara, in Eritrea, to Cairo, then on to Tunis, in Tunisia, before heading, via Cairo, to Paris

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail has arrived at the airport in Cairo, along with the families of those on board, state-run Nile News TV reports

Aviation analyst Alex Macheras told the BBC that Airbus A320s were regularly used for short-haul budget flights and had "an amazing safety record"

In March, an EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus. The attacker later surrendered and all hostages were released

Last October, a Russian passenger plane flying from Sharm el-Sheikh crashed over the Sinai peninsula killing all 224 people on board. Officials in Moscow and Egypt later said the aircraft was brought down by an explosive device