Does Egypt Air have the "2-Person", cockpit rule? News is reporting DG were not being carried and CDG says security was unlikely to be compromised. Seems a bit far from the action for a SAM launch from a warship.

Sky News reporting that shipping crew in the area saw flames in the sky.

At 02.26 UTC say reuters that the Egyptian military received a distress call
....if correct that is shortly after it 'disappeared '

ELT?

According to the Guardian


EgyptAir flight MS804 disappears from radar between Paris and Cairo ? live updates | World news | The Guardian


'EgyptAir says that the plane’s emergency devices (possibly an emergency locator transmitter or beacon) sent a distress signal that was received at 4.26am, some two hours after the previously stated last radar contact.'

Latest Rumours....
"Distress Call heard by Miltary"
"Mayday Call issued before crash"
"Distress Call not by pilot but by equipment"
"Fireball Witnessed"
"Military search and rescue teams have received a signal from the missing plane's emergency devices"
"Greek officials investigating reports from island residents that they saw a ball of fire in the sky"

It's about 175 nautical miles from the boundary between the Cairo and Athinai FIRs at waypoint KUMBI to landfall on the Egyptian coast via UL612; So if reports that LKP was 10nm inside the Cairo FIR are correct, that's 165nm or 305km, give or take.

That position is only about 150nm from the Greek islands to the north and northwest, so a touch closer to Greece than to Egypt, but pretty much in the middle.

hello CNN??

do you realise that the distress call can be either from the pilots or from the aircraft itself?????

please put someone on who knows what he is talking about ??

thanks!

I read approx 30 mins from arrival - about normal for beginning of descent. Sorry.

I think someone prodded him with a fragment of a clue camel

Press release 4

An EGYPTAIR official declared that EGYPTAIR A320 aircraft in its flight number MS804 lost contact with radar above the Mediterranean Sea about 280 KM from the Egyptian seacoast at 02:30 am CLT as the flight was expected to arrive Cairo Airport at 03:15 am CLT.
EGYPTAIR confirms that there are 56 passengers in addition to 10 cabin crew members onboard the aircraft and the passengers' nationalities are as follows:
- 15 French
- 30 Egyptian
- 1 British
- 1 Belgium
- 2 Iraqis
- 1 Kuwaiti
- 1 Saudi
- 1 Sudanese
- 1 Chadian
- 1 Portuguese
- 1 Algerian
- 1 Canadian

EGYPTAIR crisis center is following up with the concerned authorities and EGYPTAIR will issue any additional information once available.
EGYPTAIR has hosted the passengers' families near to Cairo Airport and has provided doctors, translators and all the necessary services to the passengers' family members during their stay at Cairo Airport.

According to Greek media (roughly translated by me):

"There was a normal radio call above KEA waypoint between the flight and Athens ACC at approx 0300am LT. The next call was due 20 minutes later, prior to exiting Athens FIR and handoff to Egypt. The plane never responded to repeated ATC calls. The plane was still visible on radar. The plane was then lost from radar approx 7nm after entering the Egyptian FIR just south of KUMBI. Athens asked military radar whether they were tracking the aircraft. They were not. Athens raised SAR and notified Egypt. A C130, a helicopter and an early-warning aircraft were scrambled as well as a frigate (HNS Nikiforos Fokas) following reports from the captain of a merchant vessel that he saw a "flash" in the sky 130nm south of the island of Karpathos."

Link to sea traffic in the area
 

This link will show you the marine traffic in the approximate area.

AIS Vessel Tracking - AIS Positions Maps | AIS Marine Traffic

Sadly although the position will be accurately fixed is that as reported today it has gone down in the deepest part of the Mediterranean

Deepest point in Mediterranean Sea 5267 metres (17280 feet) Calypso Deep, Ionian Basin, 45 miles SW of Pylos, Greece south of there is also deep

So we will be back to difficulties reaching the wreckage and the black box

From another forum

Ships diverted to search area approx 200km due N of Alexandria
AIS Vessel Tracking - AIS Positions Maps | AIS Marine Traffic

If you check the cluster of ships close to the SofiaExpress you will find one that is stationary (Oceanus. If you use the Track option you will find that the closest ships have all change course significantly to converge towards where Oceanus is currently stationary.

French media reporting wreckage found off Karpathos... :-(

Given the altitude and airspeed at the point of disappearence the plane, or parts of it, will likely be quite some distance south east of the last know location, which could be in shallower parts of the Med.

Discarding the usual creative but pointless theories, all we know with any degree of certainty is that the plane disappeared suddenly at cruising altitude (or thereabouts) having just entered Egyptian airspace. The rapidity of the event suggests some kind of very sudden 'mechanical' failure - cause unknown. Realistically there are only two broad possibilities; explosive device or a sudden mechanical/structural/engine-type failure.

For some reason I can't help feeling that there is some significance in whatever happened did so just as the flight entered Egyptian airspace.

Or on initialising descent ?

Highly improbable Pace, as the Greek's have been reported to say that they didn't answer calls to contact Cairo approaching the FIR boundary.

I do not think there's any significance of it being inside of Egyptian airspace. If it was sabotage then how would the perpetrator know that they were in the Egyptian FIR?