breaking news this morning on "world news now." the search for a missing flight now believed to have crashed into the sea. >> the egyptair flight was headed from paris to cairo before it disappeared from the radar around 2:45 a.m. local time. the search is now on for the wreckage of that flight in the sea. the flight had 66 people on board. that's 56 passengers, seven crew members and three security officers. but investigators are still trying to figure out what caused this crash into we have full coverage on this thursday, may 19th. from abc news, this is "world news now." >> good morning on this thursday morning. i'm kendis gibson. >> and i'm diane macedo. we have breaking news for you this morning. new details about the

over the eastern mediterranean. >> flight 04 depart olympiad charles defall airport in paris late last night heading to cairo egypt but never arrived. >> an airline official now says a distress signal was received from the airplane's emergency equipment before it vanished from the radar. that's different from a distress call. it did not come from the pilots but the equipment on the plane that sends a signal automatically. aviation officials say they can confirm the plane crashed. >> the plane was an airbus anxiety 320 flying at 37,000 feet which is cruising altitude when it went down right around the time that it entered egyptian air space. the sad part, 66 people were on board. 56 of them passengers. some three infants we're told and ten crew members that include three security guards or the egyptian equivalent of air marshals. >> that's right. looking at the passenger

manifest, a big dispersion in where the passengers were from. 30 were from egypt. 15 from france. those families are now have many questions they're hoping to get answered and we're going to go now to lucy williamson of the bbc at charles de gaulle airport in paris, france, where this flight left from the late last night. >> reporter: france is moving into action this morning. there are crisis centers set up here at the airport. also the foreign ministry to deal with the families of those 15 french passengers who were on board the plane. president hollande is also reported to be holding a crisis meeting later today with the prime minister, the foreign minister, the defense minister, all the people you would imagine to try and get to the bottom of what happened to the plane. we're told he's already spoken to egypt's president, they've agreed to work together to try and push forward this investigation and, of course, there are so many questions that just beginning to be raised now about the implications of what

the implications for egypt but also potentially for france. >> from there we go about 3 1/2 hours south to where the search effort is centered right now. i'll show you the map. you can see there, it is near a greek island of karpathos. an all out search is under way right now including greek aircraft as well as boats that are there looking for the plane including a c-130 plane. >> and this is an all-out effort not only from egyptian officials but from greek officials, as well. the french foreign minister has offered whatever egypt needs offering planes and slips to help in the search. we're going to go now to colonel steve ganyard not only a pilot but who has done work for the pentagon. we talked to him this morning before we confirmed the plane crashed. he had interesting analysis what may have gone wrong. >> there's so little information on this right now. where do you start in an

>> well, we have radar data which is better than radar data. it's the global position system data that's transmit from the aircraft. so even though the aircraft was lost well out to sea, there's going to be good data on the altitude, the air speed and what the aircraft was doing in its final moments. i think we'll have a pretty good idea whether the airplane did just disappear which may suggest a bomb or go into some sort of steep descent. we obviously don't have any radar transmissions. lots of questions at this point. i think we have data that will allow to us find the wreckage. >> as we mentioned it is farrell fairly early on in the investigation right now. we do know according to egyptair it was flying at 37,000 feet when it disappeared from radar. what are the possible scenarios that could have resulted in that? >> was eave seen in mishaps in the past, if you remember the mishap in sharm el sheikh egypt,

when an airplane just disappears at cruise altitude, it's very unusual and usually something that's catastrophic that will bring it down, perhaps a bomb or hijacking or somebody takes control of the airplane. but an airplane, an airliner at cruise altitude is a very safe place to be. there's no reason in the world that an airplane should just disappear other than something nefarious or catastrophic mapping. > in terms of looking at other possibilities, the weather radar we're looking at looks fairly clear. do you know anything about the flight path that might race concerns. >> we were always concerned when an airline from the middle east is involved. we've seen air terrorism in egypt in the past. we've seen a number of instances where we know that terrorists or people who would do alarm for causes that are related to the middle east have been related. but anything going into the middle east where you

very tense domestic situation, it's just going to raise all sorts of flags. and of course, the first thought is terrorism involved. >> absolutely. i imagine this is going to be multiagency and multicountry investigation that is taking place right now. give us a sense of what mobilizes at this early hour. >> right now it will be the recovery that's going to take priority. the egyptians because it appears the aircraft came down in egyptian air space will take the lead on that since it's something like a disaster at sea. you'll have all sorts of nations joining. so any nation that has ships or boats or rescue campaign bes along the mediterranean will join in the search. because it's an egyptian airplane and occurred in egyptian air space, the egyptians will have the lead on the investigation. >> we're talking about quite a few hours since the last contact with this plane. what does that do in terms of theorys on

>> it just continues to deepen the mystery. again, an airplane should not disappear at 37,000 feet. and because we have so much good data, this airplane will not go missing in the same way that say the malaysian 370 flight that we lost up in the indian ocean still haven't found years later. we're going to find this airplane and find the wreckage. the mediterranean is not too deep in this part of the eastern med. we will find the airplane. we will find the black boxes and so i think we'll have a pretty good chance of determining what went wrong. >> we haven't yet heard any reports of distress calls coming from the plane. does that help determine wlerp mechanical failure may or may not have played a part in this? >> mechanical will be one thing to look at. the fact that it just disappears is going to suggest something more nefarious. perhaps something explosive that would have made the airplane come part instantaneously and not given

render a may day call of any kind. >> colonel, quickly, you wake up and you hear this news and see it on television and your gut instinct is what? not again. we're getting to that point where we're just so many aircraft recently and then usually terrorism related. in this part of the world, that's where we have to look. and it's going to be hopefully not terrorism but losing an airplane like this is highly unusual and probably that's where they'll look first. >> the key word you had there not again. colonel steve ganyard, thank you so much for joining us at this early morning hour. >> thank you, colonel. when we come back, we'll have more on this developing story of this missing egyptair flight. >> stay with us. (male #1) it's a little something i've done every night since i was a kid, empty my pocket change into this old jar. it's never much, just what's left after i break a dollar.

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we're continuing our coverage right now of egyptair flight 804 which we're now being told has crashed somewhere in the mediterranean. a little bit earlier on, we spoke with matt olsen who is a counter-terrorism expert. many people are saying that might be one of the possible causes. >> again still in the early stage in this investigation. that does not mean it is terrorism. a lot of things pointing to that now. we got matt's take on why. >> we've seen mishaps in the past if you remember the mishap in sharm el sheikh egypt, the russian airplane that went down. when an airplane just disappears at altitude at cruise alditude, it's very unusual and usually something that's catastrophic that will bring it down. perhaps a bomb or somebody takes control of the

altitude is a very safe place to be. there's no reason in the world that an airplane should just disappear other than something nefarious or catastrophic happening. > in terms of looking at other possibilities the weather radar we're looking at looks fairly clear. do you know anything about the flight path that might raise concerns? >> we're always concerned when an airline from the middle east is involved. we've seen air terrorism in egypt in the past. we've seen a number of instances where we know that terrorists or people who would do harm for causes that are related to the middle east have been relate but anything going into the middle east where you have egypt a very tense domestic situation, it's just going to raise all sorts of flags. and of course, the first thought is going to be is terrorism involved. >> absolutely. i imagine this is going to be a multiagency, multicountry investigation that is taking place right now. give us a sense of what

>> right now, it will be the recovery that's going to take priority. the egyptians because it appears the aircraft has come down in egyptian air space will take the lead on that since it's something like a disaster at sea. you'll have all sorts of nations joining. so any nation that has ships or boats or rescue capabilities along the mediterranean will join in the search. because it's an egyptian airplane, because it occurred in egyptian air space, the vice presidentions will have the lead on the investigation. >> we're already talking about quite a few hours since the last contact with this plane. what does that do in terms of theories on what happened here? >> it just continues to deepen the mystery. again, an airplane should not disappear at 37,000 feet. and because we have so much good data, this airplane will not go missing in the same way that say the

lost in the indian ocean, still haven't found years late per. we're going to find this airplane. we're going to find the wreckage mediterranean is not too deep in this part of the eastern med. we will find the airplane. we will find the black boxes and so i think we'll have a pretty good chance of determining what went rowing. >> we haven't heard any distress calls coming from the plane. does that help determine wlrp mechanical failure may or may not have played a part in this? >> mechanical would be one thing to look at. the fact that it just disappears is going to suggest more nefarious,; perhaps something explosive that would have made the airplane come part instantly and not given the crew a chance to render a may day call of any kind. >> i should point out since talking to matt, we learned that the plane equipment did accepted out a distress signal but no word of a distress call from the pilots which means

wrong, the pilots did not have a chance to report it. >> the distress signal automatically happens the plane, once it hit the mediterranean, the equipment sent up a signal to the gps flying above to give it a location. right now, you have a lot of people who are searching that area near karpathos for this plane. >> the initials experts trying to see if they can get more information from it. missing flight 804 with 66 passengers on board. we have more on that continuing coverage coming up and also after the break, some news headlines for you. >> announcer: "world news now"

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we'll have continuing coverage four in a moment on missing flight gypion air flight 804. other headlines we want to get to this morning beginning with the race for the white house. donald trump is gaining ground in a possible match-up with hblt. a new poll by fox news has trump pulling slightly ahead of clinton. 45% to 42. a statistical dead heat. in the new poll, clinton has strong support in women and hispanics while trump does well with men and white voters. trump released a list of potential supreme court nominees apparently aimed at winning over republicans skeptical about his

candidacy. the 11 judges he's considering as a possible replacement for justice scalia are all conservative and all white. there are eight men, three women and most are younger than 55. one of those junes on list that is repeatedly mocked trump on twitter. and a top u.s. general says isis may be changing tactics in iraq. this follows a series of deadly bombings in baghdad which killed at least 200 people over the last week. joseph vo tell says isis may be trying to distract iraq's leaders already facing a number of other challenges. >> the pentagon detailing a close encounter between a u.s. aircraft and two chinese fighter jets in international air space over the south china sea. a u.s. official calls it an unsafe intercept in which one of those chinese jets came within 100 feet of the u.s. plane at high speeds. despite the close call, the u.s.

overseas now where ecuador has been jolt bid two powerful earthquakes. no serious damage but school is canceled today as a precaution. one person was killed and dozens injured. both quakes were centered along the pacific coast near the epicenter of last month's magnitude 7.8 quake which killed 600 people. >> house republicans have pushed through a $622 million bill to battle the zika virus. it is going to set up a showdown between the senate and white house. the vote broke mostly along party lines as democrats lined up in opposition. the senate has cleared the way for much larger funding package, just over $1 billion. the white house has threatened to veto house bill. >> some encouraging news in the battle against the deadliest form of skin cancer. a new kind of drug which target adds the immune system dramatically improved life expectancy for those suffering from melanoma. the drug

treat jimmy carter when cancer spread to his brain. >> hoping to overcome the possible bias in facebook's trending topics, mark zuckerberg invited more than a dozen conservative afterwards, most describing the meeting as positive. >> i think we understood more what facebook is trying to do and how seriously they take it. it's a big deal to these guys. a community of 1.6 billion people. they have to be a fair broker to maintain trust. >> zuckerberg said "we built facebook to be a platform for all ideas. i wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation how we can build trust. >> we're continuing to follow developments taking place right now in europe and the mediterranean right now. egyptair flight 804 has gone down. we're getting live pictures right now. i believe these are from the

cairo airport where the plane was due to arrive early this morning. it did not. our coverage on the other side of this break.

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we have continuing conch on that breaking news of missing egyptair flight 804. it vanished over the mediterranean with 66 people on board. we are now going to foot and we have of family members, live video of family members standing by waiting for answers. so many questions still left to know what happened to their family members and particularly in cairo and in paris. paris where the plane left. cairo where it was destined to land. authorities there are setting up information centers for these family members to give them news as they get it. there were 15 french citizens on board, 30 egyptians, a total of 56 passengers on board plus ten crew members. >> you could kind of see the grief on that one particular woman's face there at paris charles de gaulle. this is

cairo airport where that plane was expected to arrive around 4:00 local time this morning. and just i would say about 175 miles or so from that location, where it's believed right now by aviation officials that the plane went down. there's a massive search effort taking place at this hour for that plane. we show you here the map and you can see where that search is centered near the island. greek island of karpathos. the plane last received a communication from the pilots at around 37,000 feet, cruising altitude which is raising lots of question what went wrong. that's general a very easy time for flying. not very many things go wrong at that state. also a distress signal was sent from the plane we believe on impact when the plane crashed. we want to stress the difference here. that was a distress signal from the emergency equipment on board, not from the pilots. so the deduction is w

have a chance to radio in and report whatever that problem was. we have weather radar that showed clear skies at the time. the airline has been saying they got no other reports of distress from the plane and nothing of suspicion in the baggage. >> the plane is a fairly reliable and very popular plane. it is made in france. it was made back in 2003. so as far as planes go, it's relatively young plane with no known problems prior. and it had 66 people on board. 56 of them were passengers. three young infants among those on board. which is a little suspicious for many folks. there were three air marshals or the equivalent of three air marshals on board this plane and some seven crew members, as well. >> some are saying three security officers for a plane that have size is a little bit high. though not a huge indication necessarily of anything here. just a lot of questions right

making news in america this morning, breaking overnight, a plane missing over the mediterranean. ang egyptair plane missing. >> the mystery now, how did it go down? the all-out search right now as new details surface about who was on board. >> good morning, everyone. we'll get started with that breaking news, the disappearance of an egyptair plane. >> officials say that plane has crashed. we're seeing pictures of relatives of those on the flight at charles de gaulle airport in paris. that's where the flight started.