A Greek aviation source said the flight had disappeared from Greek radar at around 0029 GMT.
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Later, the French military said a Falcon surveillance jet monitoring the Mediterranean for migrants had been diverted to help search for the EgyptAir plane.
The first physical clues to the crash of Flight 804, which carried 66 passengers, crew and security officers, surfaced about 190 miles off the coast of the Egyptian city of Alexandria. / AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKIKHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images Relatives of passengers on a vanished EgyptAir flight grieve as they leave the in-flight service building where they were held at Cairo International Airport, Egypt, Thursday, May 19, 2016.
On Thursday, the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation had reported remnants of a plane had been found near Greece. “I don’t want to go to assumptions like others”, Fathy said.
A relative of the victims of the EgyptAir crash wipes her tears at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris.
The hunt is continuing for bodies and debris from the EgyptAir plane that fell out of the sky over the Mediterranean Sea as investigators try to determine whether the disaster was the work of terrorists.
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi speaks at a news conference.
The jet had been flying from Paris to Cairo overnight when it disappeared off radar screens, without sending a distress signal.
He said that if there was an attack on the plane, it was more likely that it happened inside the aircraft, such as an “act of terrorism”.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for bombing a Russian passenger plane over Egypt’s Sinai in October, killing all 224 people on board.
“The airline confirms that it is taking all necessary measures to deal with the situation on all fronts”, EgyptAir said.
Egyptian officials hinted terrorism may have been a factor in the incident. The manifest was leaked online and has not been verified by EgyptAir.
Egyptian security officials said they were running background checks on the passengers to see if any had links to extremists.
He said the pilots could have been trying to control an aircraft disabled by an explosion, like in 1976 when two bombs exploded on a Cuban passenger plane after takeoff from Barbados and the pilot tried to steer the aircraft away from a beach.
Workers including baggage handlers, maintenance staff, gate agents, security guards and airline boarding employees all carry “red badges” that provide access to restricted areas of the airport.
He said it was too early to say whether a technical problem or a terror attack caused the plane to crash.
Experts said answers will come only with examination of the wreckage and the plane’s black box recorders.
There was no distress call, which suggested a sudden, catastrophic event to the former chief of France’s aviation investigation bureau, Jean-Paul Troadec.
On Friday Kammenos said Egypt had told Greece that search teams had found “a body part, two seats and one or more items of luggage” in waters north of Alexandria. Search teams today scoured a wide area south of the Greek island of Crete for signs of the Airbus A320.
Three French investigators and a technical expert from the A320’s manufacturer, Airbus, arrived Friday in Cairo to aid in the investigation.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi offered condolences for those on board, amounting to Egypt’s official acknowledgement of their deaths, although there was still no explanation of why the Airbus had crashed.
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“God give great mercy and host them in his heaven”, his message said.
