EgyptAir missing flight MS804: embassy searches for Australian details

Officials in France and Egypt are trying to discover if any Australians were on board the EgyptAir plane which disappeared.

Embassy officials in France and Egypt are trying to discover if any Australians were on board the EgyptAir plane which disappeared en route to Cairo.

Flight MS804 was carrying 66 people — 56 passengers and 10 crew — from Paris and travelling at 37,000 feet (11,280 metres) when it disappeared from radars, the airline said in a tweet.

“The Australian embassies in Cairo and Paris are making urgent inquiries with local authorities to determine whether any Australians are on board the missing Egypt Air flight, MS 804,” a DFAT spokesman said on Thursday.

An Egyptian civil aviation agency spokesman said the plane is believed to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.

The Airbus A320 departed Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris at 11.09pm local time.

EgyptAir tweeted that it had disappeared about 10 minutes before it was due to land in Cairo.

Its last known position was above the Mediterranean Sea.

Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry says search and rescue teams are looking for the missing plane and its 59 passengers and 10 crew. The plane most likely crashed into the sea, Ihab Raslan, a spokesman for the Egyptian civil aviation agency, told SkyNews Arabia.

AAP/AP/Reuters