There was a "mix of attitudes" among passengers on flights into Cairo after the EgyptAir plane crashed, the BBC's Kevin Connolly says.

"On mine, some were fatalistic, others nervously pragmatic - one passenger told me he could not afford to change expensive, long-laid travel plans, however grim the news. Some were more openly apprehensive." 

Read more from Kevin: EgyptAir crash fuels fears and theories

A body part, seats and one or more items of luggage have been found by crews searching for the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight MS804, Greece's defence minister has confirmed. 

"A few hours earlier we were informed (by Egyptian authorities) that a body part, two seats and one or more items of luggage where found in the search area," Panos Kammenos told a news conference. 

Mr Kammenos said the items were found in the search area slightly to the south of where the aircraft had vanished from radar, and slightly north of some earlier, unconfirmed debris sightings.

He said the aircraft had not deviated from its planned flight path through Greek airspace.

Image source, AFP

UK Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship the RFA Lyme Bay, which was stationed south-east of Crete, is following the flight path of EgyptAir Flight MS804 en route to the debris site.

Britain has also committed an RAF C-130 aircraft, based at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. The C130 has completed a reconnaissance flight overnight and is now flying a second mission.

The UK government has said it is "ready to offer further assistance should it be required".

British experts will be part of the team of air crash investigators to examine the wreckage of the plane when it is brought ashore.

Rescue teams are currently looking for more debris from the crashed EgyptAir plane:

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in 2014 introduced the world to towed pinger locators, ocean floor topography, search grids - the intricacies of looking for a missing aircraft at sea.

The key is to find the black box, or flight data recorder, which records the goings on in the cockpit as well as vast amounts of data about the aircraft's movements.

MH370's black box remains missing, along with the truth about what happened to the plane. Air crash investigators working on the EgyptAir crash will be hoping to avoid a similar limbo in this case. 

But the area of the Mediterranean in which the plane is thought to have crashed is not shallow, it's about 3,000m down to the floor.

Black boxes give off ultrasonic signals - or "pings" - for about a month until their batteries die. The vessels searching for the EgyptAir box may need to lower a "towed pinger locator" in order to get within range, as they did in the case of MH370.

France, which is assisting in the search for Flight MS804, has experience in deep water aircraft searches. In 2009,Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. The first wreckage was found within days, but the black boxes were not found for two years, well after their pinger battery had expired.

They were eventually spotted by an unmanned deep-water submersible.

Reports from Normandy, France, say Pascal Hess, 51, nearly missed Flight 804 after losing his passport days earlier. But the passport was later found in the street in the town of Evreux, where he lived, allowing him to make the flight, a community website said (in French), external.

A minute's silence was held on Friday to remember Mr Hess, a freelance rock photographer, the website says.

Read more about the victims of Flight MS804

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has offered condolences to the families of victims 

His office said in a statement: "The presidency with utmost sadness and regret mourns the victims on aboard the EgyptAir flight who were killed after the plane crashed in the Mediterranean on its way back to Cairo from Paris."

Image source, Athena

Stories of passengers are beginning to emerge. Among them, a Briton who recently became a father for the second time, a family of four, and a son going home to mourn his brother.

A father to a newborn baby 

Richard Osman, a 40-year-old Welsh-born geologist, had recently become a father for the second time.

Mr Osman’s French-born wife, Aurelie, 36, gave birth to their daughter Olympe on 27 April, a sister to their 14-month old daughter Victios. The couple lived on Jersey.  

A family of four

French media say an unnamed couple in their 40s from Angers in north-west France were on the plane along with their two children.

Reports said the couple owned a market stall, and that one of their children was a baby.

A son who recently lost his mother

A spokesman for Chad's embassy in France confirmed to the BBC a Chadian citizen had been on board, but did not name him.

"He just lost his mother actually," the spokesman said. "He was going to Chad to mourn his mother. He [was] going to give condolences to his family."

A mother of three boys

Canadian media named one of the victims as Marwa Hamdy, an executive with IBM originally from Saskatoon in the province of Saskatchewan, but who had relocated to Cairo.

A family friend told the National Post that Ms Hamdy, a mother of three boys aged between 11 and 16, had been visiting family in Paris.

Read more stories here: EgyptAir crash: Who were the victims of MS804?

When the debris from EgyptAir Flight MS804 is brought ashore it will be examined by air crash investigators from several different countries. 

The investigation will be led by Egyptian Ayman el-Mokadam. He will be joined by French and British investigators as well as an expert from Airbus, the manufacturer of the aircraft. 

BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott has pointed out a 50-minute gap between the aircraft's final communication with Greek air traffic control and its disappearance from radar.

Greek air traffic controllers say they had a normal communication with the pilot at 02:48 local time. Then 40 minutes later repeated calls went unanswered by the plane, and radar signal was lost 10 minutes after that. 

BBC Monitoring

Mina Al-Lami, a jihadist media expert for the BBC Monitoring team, says there has so far been “no credible indication” to suggest that the so-called Islamic State (IS) or any other jihadist group was involved in the aircraft’s disappearance.

“Certainly there has been no claim of responsibility,” she said, adding that IS usually claims responsibility “within hours” of an attack.

“Usually these claims of responsibility are preceded by frenzied chatter by its supporters online. This hasn’t happened in the case of the Egyptian airliner.”

EgyptAir has confirmed on its Twitter feed that debris and personal belongings have been found 295km off the coast of Alexandria.

The Egyptian Air Force says it has found wreckage from the missing EgyptAir plane.

A military spokesman said in a statement that wreckage and personal belongings of passengers were found 290km off the Egyptian coast, north of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

The spokesman said the Navy was sweeping the area for the aircraft's black box.

EgyptAir officials said 100 relatives of the missing passengers have gathered at a Cairo hotel.

An EgyptAir source has confirmed to the BBC the names of pilot Mohammed Saeed Ali Ali Shoqeir and co-pilot Mohamed Ahmed Mamdouh Ahmed Assem.

On Thursday, the airline said the pilot had 6,275 hours of flying experience, including 2,101 hours on the Airbus A320, while the co-pilot had 2,766 hours of flying experience.

Families of Flight MS804's passengers, and diplomats representing their countries, will attend a briefing at the French Foreign Ministry on Saturday, according to French newspaper La Croix, external.

The paper quotes a Foreign Ministry statement as saying that all available information will be shared with the families and their representatives.

Search efforts are drawing inevitable comparisons with another recent air disaster thought to have occurred over sea - the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Dr Simon Boxall, an oceanographer from the University of Southampton who studied the area over which the EgyptAir flight disappeared, told the BBC:

"This one is an interesting one. Much easier than MH370 in terms of the access to site and there is much better data on where to look. The search also started while the pinger in the black box was fresh. But the Levantine Basin is deep - 3,000m - and this is not an area of calm seas, even in May."

Graham Braithwaite, a professor of safety at the Accident Investigation Centre at Cranfield University, said he expects they will begin with a large search area:

"You would tend to search in a grid pattern and try and narrow down the search area using aircraft to do that. And that often takes a while to get assembled and get started. Certainly in past accidents where perhaps there has been an explosion at altitude... the wreckage tends to scatter itself over a much larger pattern."

Mike Vivian, former head of operations at the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, told the BBC he thought the plane’s sharp manoeuvres before disappearing from radar were more likely to be caused by human interference than by a bomb.

“It looks highly unlikely that this was consistent with some sort of explosive device,” he said.

“One's inclined to go towards the theory that there had been some interference in the aircraft and on the flight deck, with the control of the aircraft.”

Ship tracking service Marine Traffic says that merchant vessels are no longer helping in the search, which is being led by the Egyptian Navy.

France's foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, has said there is "absolutely no indication" of what caused the crash.

Speaking to French TV on Friday morning, he said: "We are looking at all possibilities, but none is being favoured." 

Egyptian authorities have said they believe a terror attack is the most likely cause, but there is no firm evidence of an attack and no group has claimed responsibility. 

A French military Falcon jet is helping in the search for debris. Junior transport minister Alain Vidalies said France could also offer undersea search equipment and experts. 

We are restarting our live coverage of the search for missing EgyptAir Flight MS804, which disappeared en route from Paris to Cairo in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Here's what we know so far:

• A massive search is under way over the Mediterranean, led by the Egyptian navy and air force with British, French, Greek and US support.
• No debris has been found. Earlier reports of wreckage have been retracted, after the objects were found to be unconnected to the EgyptAir flight. 
• Egyptian authorities say the plane was more likely to have been brought down by a terrorist act than a technical fault, but there is no firm evidence of an explosion.
• No group has claimed responsibility for downing the plane. 
• Military radar data suggests the plane made two sharp turns, 90 degrees to the left then 360 degrees to the right, while falling more than 25,000ft (7,620m).
• The plane had 66 people on board, including 30 Egyptians, 15 French people, two Canadians and people of 10 other nationalities, including one Briton.
• Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot at 00:48 BST as the plane flew over the island of Kea. He was in good spirits and reported no problems, the HCAA said.

For Twitter coverage, follow our correspondents: Quentin Sommerville, external in Cairo, Lucy Williamson, external in Paris, and Frank Gardner, external, security correspondent.