All British tourists back from Sharm el-Sheikh by the weekend

The fallout from the crash of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula could slash tourism income from Sharm al-Sheikh by half, the head of the region’s travel agents’ association said this week.

The Metrojet Airbus A321 crashed in the Sinai Peninsula shortly after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St. Petersburg.

Sisi has previously estimated that the ongoing probe may take months to conclude.

Egypt has launched its own investigation into the growing belief among Western officials that a bomb was placed on the airliner.

He said he planned a public relations campaign to promote Egypt in Britain and Russian Federation and win back tourism from those countries, which account for two thirds of foreign visitors to the beach and diving holiday destination.

“Russia was forced into this by the British”, said a scuba diving instructor in Sharm al-Sheikh who declined to give his name.

On Monday, an Egyptian official told BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner that the country’s intelligence service was looking into every possibility of how someone could have placed a bomb inside the luggage compartment of the plane.

The Egyptian team investigating the crash told Reuters on Sunday they were “90 percent sure” the noise heard in the final second of a cockpit recording was an explosion caused by a bomb, as was reported by Ynet.

Moscow has said its ban on flights is necessary because of concerns about security at Egypt’s airports.

Air links between Russian Federation and Egypt will be cut for at least several months after last month’s air crash in which 224 died, the Kremlin’s chief of staff said Tuesday. The industry had been making a gradual recovery after years of political upheaval since the 2011 popular uprising that deposed longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

An affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group active in Sinai claimed responsibility for the crash, which is the deadliest civil aviation disaster in Russian history.

He called for Egyptians’ unity at what he described as “this hard time”.

In remarks for Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Ammari said that the decision made by a number of European countries to cancel their flights to Sharm El-Sheikh will negatively impact tourism not only in the Red Sea resort, but in all of Egypt.

“There’s a cultural problem here, and I’m not pointing the finger at the Egyptians – this is the case in a large part of the world”, he said.