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 Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said a search was underway
for the missing Airbus A320 and it was too early to rule out any
explanation, including terrorism.
Officials with the airline and the Egyptian civil aviation
department told Reuters they believed the jet had crashed into the
Mediterranean between Greece and Egypt.
Greece's civil aviation chief said calls from Greek air traffic
controllers to the jet went unanswered just before it left the
country's airspace, and it disappeared from radar screens soon
afterwards.
The search in the Mediterranean has turned up nothing as yet.
"Absolutely nothing has been found so far," a senior Greek
coastguard official told Reuters.
It remained unclear whether the disappearance was due to technical
failure or any other reason such as sabotage by ultra-hardline
Islamists, who have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites
in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over
the past few years.
The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers - with one child and two
infants among them - and 10 crew, EgyptAir said. They included 30
Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other
countries.
 "The theory that the plane crashed and fell is now confirmed after
the preliminary search and after it did not arrive at any of the
nearby airports," said a senior aviation source, who declined to be
identified.
Asked if he could rule out that terrorists were behind the incident,
Prime Minister Ismail said: "We cannot exclude anything at this time
or confirm anything. All the search operations must be concluded so
we can know the cause."
"Search operations are ongoing at this time for the airplane in the
area where it is believed to have lost contact," he told reporters
at Cairo airport.
The pilot had clocked up 6,275 hours of flying experience, including
2,101 hours on the A320, while the first officer had 2,766 hours,
the airline said.
For live coverage of the EgyptAir missing flight click: http://live.reuters.com/Event/World_News
NO RESPONSE
Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot as the jet flew
over the island of Kea, in what was thought to be the last broadcast
from the aircraft, and no problems were reported.
But just ahead of the handover to Cairo airspace, calls to the plane
went unanswered, before it dropped off radars shortly after exiting
Greek airspace, Kostas Litzerakis, the head of Greece's civil
aviation department, told Reuters.
"During the transfer procedure to Cairo airspace, about seven miles
before the aircraft entered the Cairo airspace, Greek controllers
tried to contact the pilot but he was not responding," he said.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will chair a national
security council meeting on Thursday morning, a statement from his
office said. It did not say if the meeting would discuss the plane.
At one point EgyptAir said the plane sent an emergency signal,
possibly from a beacon attached to the plane, at 04:26 a.m., two
hours after it disappeared from radar screens. However, Civil
Aviation minister Sherif Fathi said later that further checks found
that no SOS from the plane was received.
In water crashes, an underwater beacon attached to the aircraft's
flight recorders starts to emit a signal or ping. This helps search
and rescue teams to locate the crash and find the boxes.
 "NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING"
At Cairo airport, authorities ushered families of the passengers and
crew into a closed-off waiting area.
However, two women and a man, who said they were related to a crew
member, were seen leaving the VIP hall where families were being
kept. Asked for details, the man said: "We don’t know anything, they
don’t know anything. No one knows anything."
Ayman Nassar, from the family of one of the passengers, also walked
out of the passenger hall with his daughter and wife in a distressed
state. "They told us the plane had disappeared, and that they’re
still searching for it and not to believe any rumors," he said.
A mother of flight attendant rushed out of the hall in tears. She
said the last time her daughter called her was Wednesday night.
"They haven’t told us anything," she said. EgyptAir said on its
Twitter account that Flight MS804 had departed Paris at 23:09 (CEST).
It disappeared at 02:30 a.m. at an altitude of 37,000 feet (11,280
meters) in Egyptian air space, about 280 km (165 miles) from the
Egyptian coast before it was due to land at 03:15 a.m.
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In Paris, a police source said investigators were now interviewing
officers who were on duty at Roissy airport on Wednesday evening to
find out whether they heard or saw anything suspicious. "We are in
the early stage here," the source said.
Airbus said the missing A320 was delivered to EgyptAir in November
2003 and had operated about 48,000 flight hours.
Greece said it had deployed aircraft and a frigate to the area to
help with the search. A Greek defense ministry source said
authorities were also investigating an account from the captain of a
merchant ship who reported a 'flame in the sky' about 130 nautical
miles south of the island of Karpathos.
FRANCE, EGYPT TO COOPERATE
The weather was clear at the time the plane disappeared, according
to Eurocontrol, the European air traffic network. "Our daily weather
assessment does not indicate any issues in that area at that time,"
it said.
Speed and altitude data from aviation website FlightRadar24.com
indicated the plane was cruising at the time it disappeared.
French President Francois Hollande's office said the French leader
had just spoken to his Egyptian counterpart and that both sides
would cooperate closely.
Under U.N. aviation rules, Egypt will automatically lead an
investigation into the accident assisted by countries including
France, if it is confirmed that an Airbus jet was involved.
"We are in close contact with the Egyptian authorities, both civil
and military," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French radio.
"At this stage, no theory can be ruled out regarding the causes of
the disappearance."
With its ancient archeological sites and Red Sea resorts, Egypt is a
popular destination for Western tourists. But the industry was badly
hit following the downing of a Russian jet last year, an Islamist
insurgency and a string of bomb attacks in the country.
An Airbus A321 operated by Russia's Metrojet crashed in the Sinai on
Oct. 31, 2015, killing all 224 people on board. Russia and Western
governments have said the plane was probably brought down by a bomb,
and the Islamic State militant group said it had smuggled an
explosive device on board.
The crash called into question Egypt's campaign to eradicate
Islamist militancy and has damaged its tourism industry, a
cornerstone of the economy.
Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and
police since Sisi, as army chief, toppled freely elected Islamist
President Mohamed Mursi in 2013 after mass protests against his
rule.
In March, an EgyptAir plane flying from Alexandria to Cairo was
hijacked and forced to land in Cyprus by a man with what authorities
said was a fake suicide belt. He was arrested after giving himself
up.
In the same month, Islamic State suicide bombers hit Brussels
airport and a metro train in the worst such attacks in Belgian
history, killing 32 people. Investigators believed they were carried
out by the same cell that was behind November's gun and bomb attacks
in Paris which claimed the lives of 130 people.
EgyptAir has a fleet of 57 Airbus and Boeing jets, including 15 of
the Airbus A320 family of aircraft, according to airfleets.com.
The last fatal incident involving an EgyptAir aircraft was in May
2002, when a Boeing 737 crashed into a hill while on approach to
Tunis–Carthage International Airport, killing 14 people.
(Additional reporting by Amina Ismail, Ali Abdelatti, Mostafa Hashem,
Asma Alsharif, Victoria Bryan, Siva Govindasamy, Sophie Louet, Tim
Hepher, Michele Kambas, Renee Maltezou, Brian Love and Miral Fahmy.;
Writing by Lincoln Feast and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Bill Tarrant,
Paul Tait and David Stamp.)
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