United Kingdom travellers face three day wait for Sharm el Sheikh departure

An ally of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the king “directed Saudi Arabian Airlines to continue running flights to Sharm el-Sheikh from Riyadh and Jeddah in support of tourism in the Arab Republic of Egypt”, the Saudi Press Agency reported Thursday.

“We do not want to rush the investigation of the Russian plane [crash]”.

The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St. Petersburg. Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium are said to be “monitoring developments” ahead of deciding whether to ground flights scheduled to head to the Egyptian resort town.

On Tuesday, Guevara el-Gafy, chairman of the South Sinai Travel Agents Association, said: “Losing 40 percent of our clients will lead to losing around 50 percent of the tourism income in Sharm al-Sheikh and South Sinai”.

The British government chose to suspend all flights to and from Sharm El Sheikh after receiving intelligence pointing to a “strong possibility” that the plane crash was caused by a bomb onboard.

Tourism bookings in Sharm el-Sheikh have plunged, officials said Wednesday. All 224 people on board the plane were killed.

President Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, said on a visit to Finland that it would be impossible to radically revise Egypt’s security system in a short time, according to Russian news reports.

“The next day we were told we wouldn’t be going anywhere the following day either”, Mr Henderson, of Fronks Avenue in Dovercourt, said.

Although Russian and Egyptian officials were quick to slam the claims as “untrue” and “not possible”, these reassurances seemed to fall on deaf ears as several airlines and countries halted flights to Egypt.

CAIRO-Egyptian media have reacted with fury as Britain and the United States increasingly point to a bomb as the cause of the October 31 Russian plane crash in Sinai, with many outlets hammering home the same message: Egypt is facing a Western conspiracy that seeks to scare off tourists and destroy the country’s economy.

Eastern European visitors, including people from former Soviet satellite states like Ukraine, made up a crucial 45 percent of all tourist arrivals in June, according to Egyptian government statistics.

His words, however, were little comfort to dozens of laid-off workers protesting outside Sharm El Sheikh’s Rosetta Hotel.

How much worse can things get in Egypt?

Also Wednesday, a Russian search and rescue team that was brought to Egypt after the crash flew home to Moscow.