The crash of the Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula could have serious repercussions on Egypt’s tourist sector, global Monetary Fund (IMF) Communications Department Director Gerry Rice said on Thursday.
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The most significant losses for tourism operators have come from their need to fly empty planes to Egypt to evacuate Russian tourists, according to Russian Tourism Industry Union spokeswoman Irina Tyurina.
Turkey was the favourite foreign destination for Russians in 2014, with more than three million visiting in the first nine months of the year.
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.
Fears that a bomb brought down the Metrojet flight – killing 224 people – prompted Britain, Russian Federation and various other countries to suspend all flights to and from the holiday spot. Russian Federation and Egypt said the statements were premature pending results of the official crash probe. Moscow said the ban was necessary because of concerns about security at Egypt’s airports.
The Metrojet flight, an Airbus A-321, crashed around 23 minutes after takeoff from the Sinai resort of Sharm al-Sheikh on October 31 on a flight to St. Petersburg.
The Egyptian economy has been hammered by four years of political turmoil since a popular uprising unseated autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
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. Militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Sinai, which claims it brought down the plane with a bomb, are suspected of getting an explosive device on board at the airport, with evidence pointing to an inside job. “We will have nothing but a few Ukrainians and Belarusians”, he said by telephone.
Last month’s deadly Russian jet crash in Egypt has plunged the north African tourist industry further into crisis, with resorts seen as less risky now likely to benefit from the shifting travel patterns, experts said.
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Commenting on media reports that Moscow was also mulling suspension of flights to other destinations in the Middle East, Ivanov said Russian intelligence agencies have made no such decision, but added that Moscow was monitoring the general security situation and airport security in other countries in the region.
