Egypt approves USA participation in plane crash inquiry

However Corendon is reportedly the only Dutch airline to have also halted holidays to the Egyptian destinations of Hurghada and Marsa Alam. According to presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, flights to Egypt will be suspended until proper level of security is ensured.

Most of the passengers were Russian tourists returning home.

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has called not to leap to conclusions as to why the Russian A321 plane came down over the Sinai Peninsula, he said in Sharm El Sheikh on Wednesday.

Mr Hammond said that he and other government officials involved in the decision to ground the planes had chosen to do so after asking themselves whether they would have felt safe to board a plane from Sharm el-Sheikh in the days after the crash.

The DFA says “Although there are additional security measures in place to protect the country’s major tourist resorts and sites there is a risk that tourist areas and other places frequented by foreigners may be specifically targeted by terrorists planning future attacks”.

President Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, said Moscow officials will need a minimum of several months to determine if the October 31 Metrojet crash was an act of terrorism.

The evacuation of tourists from Sharm el-Sheikh and the travel warnings issued by a few Western states represented a blow for Egypt’s already-suffering tourism sector that is one of the main sources of national income and foreign currency for the most populous Arab state.

“But on Monday morning we were having breakfast and Thompson must have been putting on extra planes to get people out quickly – we ended up going on a flight on Monday and got home in the early hours of Tuesday”.

BRITISH aviation experts analysed security at Sharm el-Sheikh just weeks before the alleged bombing of a Russian airliner but did not raise concerns about safety, a senior Egyptian official has said.

“The people defy the conspiracy – Egypt will not cave in to pressures”, read the front-page headline of the state-owned Al-Gomhur newspaper.

Militants from Sinai Province, known at the time as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility.

He believes that the occupancy rates in hotels will decline by 90 per cent after the departure of 79,000 Russians and 20,000 Brits, as well as Belgian and German tourists.