It tweeted that the pilot had logged 6275 flying hours, including 2101 hours on the A320, and the co-pilot had logged 2766 hours.
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EgyptAir says the plane’s emergency devices sent a distress signal that was received at 4:26 am – two hours after radar contact was first thought to be lost.
For now, hundreds of members of passengers’ families are waiting in the Cairo airport for news of their loved ones and more information from aviation officials.
Meanwhile, search and rescue efforts are underway at the site where contact was lost, around 280km (175 miles) north of Egypt’s coast.
Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the plane fell 22,000 feet (6,705 metres) and swerved sharply in Egyptian airspace before it disappeared from radar screens, Greece’s defence minister said.
The organisation’s c hief inspector, Keith Conradi, said: “We were saddened to hear that EgyptAir Flight MS804 was reported missing this morning”.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail held a press conference at Cairo International Airport and said terrorism is one possibility that is being considered, according to Al-Ahram.
The Airbus A320 plane was built in 2003 and was flying at 37,000 feet, the airline said on Twitter.
In the army statement, the spokesman of the Egyptian army, Brigadier General Mohammed Samir, said the army had not received any distress call from the missing plane.
Later in the day, an Egyptian search plane located two orange items believed to be from the EgyptAir flight, 230 miles southeast of Crete within the Egyptian area of Flight Information Region, a Greek military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault offered to send military planes and boats to assist in the search.
He also said nothing can be ruled as to the reason for the crash.
The French government says President Francois Hollande spoke with Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi by telephone, and they agreed to “closely cooperate to establish the circumstances” in which the EgyptAir flight disappeared.
An Airbus A321 operated by Russia’s Metrojet crashed in the Sinai in Oct 31, 2015, killing all 224 people on board.
But when air traffic controllers tried to contact the pilot again at 3.27am local time (2.27am Cairo) for the handover of the plane to Egyptian airspace “the aircraft did not respond”. The plane was carrying 66 passengers.
“Find the plane, find the people, see if there are folks that could be rescued”, said David Soucie, a CNN aviation safety analyst.
France remains under a state of emergency after Islamic extremist attacks killed 130 people in a spree of attacks in November claimed by the extremist Islamic State group.
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A French airport official was reluctant to comment on the matter, saying only: “It did not land, that is all we can say for the moment”.
