Russia halts all flights to Egypt pending improved security
“We are working with the airlines to ensure there are suitable arrangements in place to reunite passengers with their belongings as soon as possible”, the statement added.
Earlier on Friday, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, a successor agency of the Soviet KGB, called for Russian Federation to suspend flights from Egypt.
But the head of Russian intelligence, Alexander Bortnikov, recommended to Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 6 that Russian airline flights to/from Egypt should be suspended until the cause of the crash is determined.
On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said “intelligence and information” indicated a bomb was the probable reason the Metrojet Airbus A321-200 crashed in the desert, killing all 224 people on board. “Flights are coming in which will allow us to take more people home today”, Casson said in Sharm al-Sheikh as he tried to reassure exasperated tourists at the airport. Nearly everyone aboard was Russian.
The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s disaster, in which the Saint Petersburg-bound jet crashed minutes after taking off.
Putin had also ordered the government to open talks with Egyptian authorities to guarantee the safety of flights, said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman.
British airline EasyJet said that Egyptian authorities had suspended United Kingdom flights into Sharm el-Sheikh, meaning they would only be running two out of its ten planned flights.
But Britain, which has about 20,000 tourists in Sharm al-Sheikh, was planning to return them from the resort on Friday.
In a sign of further wariness, the Dutch carrier KLM told passengers leaving from the Egyptian capital of Cairo on Friday that they can only take hand luggage on board.
Egypt and Russian Federation have urged patience until the results of an investigation into the crash are known, before drawing conclusions.
Egypt said this was because there was too much check-in luggage left at the airport.
It’s unclear why Egyptian authorities prevented the eight Easyjet flights from operating-Egyptian officials say the Sharm el-Sheikh airport was being overwhelmed-but Britain’s quick attribution of a cause-terrorism-for the Russian plane crash angered both Egypt and Russia.