NEW YORK (AFP) - The FBI is probing the disappearance of US$1.2 million (S$1.5 million) in cash that had been aboard a Swissair flight that arrived at JFK airport in New York, an official said Tuesday.

The money vanished from Swiss International Airlines Flight 17 on Saturday, FBI spokesman Kelly Langmesser said, declining to give more details.

JFK was the scene of a spectacular heist in 1978 as US$5 million in cash and US$875,000 in jewels were stolen from a Lufthansa jetliner, a robbery immortalised in Martin Scorsese's 1990 movie Goodfellas.