A first flight took off for London’s Gatwick airport after a long delay. “Flights from Sharm-El-Sheikh will continue to operate although they will be subjected to extra security measures”.
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The United Kingdom government suspended air links on Wednesday after an Airbus 321 operated by Russian airline Metrojet crashed on Saturday, killing 224 people.
Islamic State, which has an affiliate in Sinai, has said it attacked the plane, which broke up at cruising altitude, suggesting a bomb or structural failure may be to blame.
In his first public comments on the disaster, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a radio interview: “There’s a possibility that there was a bomb on board”.
Western intelligence sources said a few of the assessment about the bomb came from intercepted communications both from suspected militants and from one or more governments involved in the investigation.
Egypt’s Civil Aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, insisted that the country’s airports comply with worldwide security standards.
And the Kremlin said Britain had not shared the intelligence on which its bomb suspicions were based.
“The head of state agreed with these recommendations”, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
There is no global or European blanket ban and a few flights, including all Russian ones, have continued from the airport.
France and Belgium are advising their citizens against all but essential travel to the resort, and the Netherlands is warning against travelling via the resort’s airport.
But Britain, which has about 20,000 of its tourists in Sharm al-Sheikh, was planning to return them from the resort on Friday.
Those plans were thrown into confusion when Egypt said only eight of the planned 29 flights to take the Britons home would be able to operate.
“He put the case on the conveyor belt and the girl checked us in, and at no point did my luggage go through any scanner”, the man told Britain’s Sky News.
“We expect it to happen and hope it will happen”. “When we develop those additional measures, we work closely with industry and our global partners to make sure that they are properly and effectively implemented”, he said.
“All hold luggage will be returned to customers under separate secure cover arranged by the United Kingdom government”.
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The Transport Secretary says most British tourists in Sharm el-Sheikh will be home by this evening; but EasyJet says its planned rescue flights “have been suspended by the Egyptian authorities”.
