The pilot of the doomed EgyptAir flight spoke to air traffic control in Egypt for several minutes just before the plane crashed, a French television station has claimed.

M6 said that the pilot told Cairo control about the smoke which had engulfed parts of the aircraft and decided to make an emergency descent to try to clear the fumes.

This account directly contradicts the official claim that there was no distress call from the plane.

M6’s story, quoting unnamed French aviation officials, was not confirmed by the French air accident investigation agency, the BEA.

No such information had been passed by the Egyptian authorities to three BEA investigators who had flown to Cairo to take part in the official inquiry, the agency said.

M6 said that the pilot of the Egyptair A320 had "a conversation several minutes long" with Cairo air traffic control after the plane ran into difficulties in the early hours of Thursday morning.

As a result of the conversation, the pilot decided to make an “emergency descent”, depressurising the cabin, in an attempt to clear smoke fumes which had invaded the front of the aircraft.

Just after the Paris-Cairo flight vanished on Thursday, there were contradictory claims about distress calls or signals. An airline spokesman initially said that there had been a distress call from the airbus. This statement was denied by the Egyptian military and withdrawn by EgyptAir.

In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash A relative of a passenger who was flying aboard an EgyptAir plane that vanished from radar en route from Paris to Cairo overnight cries as family members are transported by bus to a gathering point at Cairo airport Getty Images In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Security personnel are seen outside an Egyptair in-flight service building at Cairo International Airport Reuters In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Relatives of passengers on a vanished EgyptAir flight grieve as they leave the in-flight service building where they were held at Cairo International Airport Getty Images In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail talks to reporters at Cairo International Airport AP In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Relatives leave the Egyptair in-flight service building where they were held at Cairo International Airport In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash A relative of the victims of the EgyptAir flight 804 reacts as she makes a phone call at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash A relative of the victims of the EgyptAir flight 804 wipes her tears as she is comforted by unidentified people at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash A relative of the victims of the EgyptAir flight 804 is escorted at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Relatives of missing EgyptAir flight MS804 are seen at Cairo Airport In pictures: EgyptAir flight MS804 crash Flight path of EgyptAir Flight MS804

The claims follow reports of leaked flight data showing trouble in the cockpit and smoke in a plane lavatory just before the plane crashed.

Officials have cautioned it's still too early to say what happened to the aircraft, but mounting evidence points to a sudden, dramatic catastrophe that led to its crash into the eastern Mediterranean.

The Egyptian military on Saturday released the first images of aircraft debris plucked from the sea, including personal items and damaged seats. Egypt is leading a multi-nation effort to search for the plane's black boxes — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — and other clues that could help explain its sudden plunge into the sea.

Images of EgyptAir wreckage

"If they lost the aircraft within three minutes that's very, very quick," said aviation security expert Philip Baum. "They were dealing with an extremely serious incident."

Authorities say the plane lurched left, then right, spun all the way around and plummeted 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) into the sea — never issuing a distress call.

The Facebook page of the chief spokesman for Egypt's military showed the first photographs of debris from the plane, shredded remains of plane seats, life jackets — one seemingly undamaged — and a scrap of cloth that might be part of a baby's purple-and-pink blanket.

The spokesman, Brig-Gen. Mohammed Samir, later posted a video showing what appeared to be a piece of blue carpet, seat belts, a shoe and a white handbag. The clip opened with aerial footage of an unidentified navy ship followed by a speedboat heading toward floating debris.

Flight 804 left from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport on Wednesday night en route to Cairo with 66 people aboard. The first available audio from the doomed flight indicates that all was routine as the pilot checked in with air traffic controllers in Zurich, Switzerland, around midnight, before being handed over to Italian air traffic controllers in Padua (Padova): Pilot — "This is 0-7-2-5 Padova control. (Unintelligible) 8-0-4. Thank you so much. Good day er good night."

The communication, taken from liveatc.net which provides live air traffic control broadcasts from around the world, occurred about 2 hours before Greek air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane.

Greek officials say at 2:24 a.m. local time the flight entered the Athens sector of Greek airspace. Twenty-four minutes later, controllers chatted with the pilot, who appeared to be in good spirits.

In Greek, the pilot quipped: "Thank you."

At 3:12 a.m., the plane passed over the Greek island of Kasos before heading into the eastern Mediterranean, according to flight data maintained by FlightRadar24.

Less than 15 minutes later, about midway between Greece and Egypt, a sensor detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the plane's cockpit windows, according to leaked flight data published by The Aviation Herald.

Messages like these "generally mean the start of a fire," said Sebastien Barthe, a spokesman for France's air accident investigation agency. But he warned against inferring too much more from the reading. "Everything else is pure conjecture."