An Egypt Air flight to Cairo from Paris has gone missing.

The MS804 flight took off late on 18 May from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport and went missing 16 kilometres into Egyptian airspace, says the civil aviation authority.

It is understood that 59 passengers and 10 crew members are on board the Airbus 320 plane.

Earlier this year a domestic Egypt Air flight was hijacked and re-routed to Cyprus before hostages were released by the cypriot authorities.

The incident ended with no casualties with the hijackers’ motives later being revealed as non-political.

Egypt’s aviation industry has been in the spotlight since October last year when a Russian passenger flight from Sharm el-Sheikh was downed by jihadi groups operating in the Sinai penninsula.

Tourism has suffered as a result with tourist visitors declining by 50 per cent in March this year.