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EgyptAir Flight 804 vanished from radar on its way from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard, the airline said Thursday.

The plane was flying at 37,000 feet when it lost contact overnight above the Mediterranean Sea, the airline tweeted.

The flight left Charles de Gaulle Airport at 11:09 p.m. Wednesday local time and was supposed to land in Cairo at 3:15 a.m. Thursday. Both the departure and arrival cities are in the same time zone.

The location of last contact was 173 miles (280 kilometers) from the Egyptian coast, the airline tweeted.

There was no special cargo on the flight and no notification of any dangerous goods aboard, an airline official said.

The plane had routine maintenance checks Wednesday in Cairo, before it left for Paris, an airline official said.

A distress signal was detected in the general vicinity where the flight disappeared, the airline official said. The signal was detected at 4:26 a.m. -- about 2 hours after the jet vanished. He said the distress signal could have come from another vessel in the Mediterranean. But the Egyptian armed forces stressed that they had not received a distress call.

There's no confirmed information on the status of the missing plane, Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said.

Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot at 2:27 a.m. Cairo time, but the pilot did not mention any problems, aviation officials said. The plane left Greek airspace a minute later and entered Egypt's airspace. Two minutes later, Greek radars lost touch with it.

Greece is taking part in the rescue operation. 

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