Egypt to lose $280mn a month from Russian Federation & United Kingdom flight bans

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pledged a transparent probe into the Russian plane crash and cautioned against hasty conclusions, during a visit Wednesday to the airport from where the doomed aircraft took off.

“The possibility of an act of terror is of course there as the reason for what happened”, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev admitted in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta state newspaper. US and British officials have cited intelligence reports as indicating the passenger plane was likely downed by a bomb on board.

Ivan Henderson, his wife Jo, and son Joseph were on a family trip with relatives when 224 people flying from the resort to Russian Federation were killed when their plane crashed on 31 October.

Ivanov said Egypt needs to improve its security regime not only in Sharm el-Sheikh, but also in airports in Cairo and the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.

“We had about 4,500 passengers in Sharm last Wednesday and brought back 1,500 of them”, she said.

He said the British government had suspended flights prematurely, adding that even if the Airbus 321 is confirmed to have been brought down by a bomb, suspending flights would only help those who engineered the attack.

A spokeswoman said: “Across the resort, airport style scanners, sniffer dogs, body searches, metal detectors, private security, police and CCTV are being used to keep tourists safe”. Egypt has repeatedly warned it is too early to determine the cause.

The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, but that was initially dismissed by both the Egyptian and Russian authorities. Sharm el-Sheikh had been an exception, attracting millions of tourists from Russian Federation and Europe lured by the beaches, cheap holiday packages and direct charter flights.

Asked during a press conference in Washington DC about the delays for Britons trying to get back to the United Kingdom compared with other countries, Philip Hammond said the Government had insisted on “some very significant increased security requirements”. The crash has led to calls for greater security at airports in regions near where jihadists operate. It has also raised fears for Egypt’s vital tourism industry, which had already been suffering from years of unrest.

Russia has returned 11,000 of its tourists from Egypt in the last 24 hours, RIA news agency said on Sunday, a fraction of the 80,000 Russians who were stranded by the Kremlin’s decision on Friday to halt all flights to Egypt.