EgyptAir Flight 804 'crashed,' French president says, EgyptAir: International airline with a history of hijackings.

EgyptAir Flight 804: Wreckage found, airline official says.

Searchers scouring the heavily traveled waters of the Mediterranean Sea for EgyptAir Flight 804 on Thursday have found the plane's wreckage, airline Vice Chairman Ahmed Adel told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

He did not elaborate on the condition of the wreckage, which the airline said was found near the Greek island of Karpathos. But Adel said the search and rescue operation was turning into a search and recovery mission -- language that often denotes a lack of survivors.

"Our main concern right now is taking care of the family and friends of all those who perished," Adel told Amanpour. "We are now in the process of contacting next of kin. Once that process is complete, we will release the passenger manifest."

Earlier, a spokesman for Greece's Hellenic National Defense General Staff had said crew aboard an Egyptian search aircraft had spotted two floating objects 210 nautical miles southeast of Crete. It's unclear whether those objects are part of the wreckage described by Adel.

EgyptAir is no stranger to headline-making incidents.

In the deadliest, the national flag carrier saw one of its jets, a Boeing 737, seized in November 1985 by gunmen said to have links to the Abu Nidal extremist group.

They diverted the plane shortly after takeoff from Athens, landing in Malta, where a raid by Egyptian commandos resulted in the deaths of 50 passengers and six hijackers.

To date, according to the Aviation Safety Network's safety database, the airline has been the victim of no fewer than eight hijackings, including an incident in March 2016, in which an "unstable" man held passengers and crew of an EgyptAir A320-232 hostage with a fake explosive belt, forcing the plane to divert to Cyprus -- apparently over issues involving his ex-wife, a Cypriot.