Russia on Friday, November 6, suspended all passenger flights to Egypt after days of resisting US and British suggestions that a bomb may have brought down a Russian plane in the Sinai Peninsula a week ago.
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The flight data and voice recorders showed “everything was normal” until both failed at 24 minutes after takeoff, pointing to “a very sudden explosive decompression”, one source said.
It said the jet came within 1,000 feet of a missile in its trajectory August 23, and went on to land safely.
The Russian plane crashed late October in Egypt’s North Sinai a while after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, which killed all 224 people on board.
The belief that a bomb was most likely to blame centers to a large extent on British and US intercepts of communications after the crash from the Islamic militant group ISIS’ affiliate in Sinai to ISIS operatives in Syria, according to officials.
A deputy Russian prime minister says the first of three teams of Russian inspectors has been dispatched to Egypt to examine security conditions at airports there.
British attempts to fly home thousands of holidaymakers on Friday were mired in confusion when Egypt restricted the number of flights, citing capacity limits at Sharm al-Sheikh airport and British airliners’ refusal to take passenger luggage in the hold.
Russian and Egyptian officials had bristled at statements linking the crash to a bomb, saying it was too soon to tell the cause.
Almost 80,000 Russian tourists are estimated have been stranded in Egypt by their government’s decision to halt flights.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s office said he called Putin and they agreed to bolster coordination to “strengthen security measures for Russian planes”.
Egypt’s tourism industry could lose around 70% of its total visitors after the recent outflow of British and Russian tourists, according to an Egyptian official.
The British Department for Transport (DfT) said its investigation concluded it was not a “targeted attack”, while Thomson said there was “no cause for concern” for further flights.
“The information we have heard about has not been shared with Egyptian security agencies in detail”, he said.
“The committee is considering with great attention all possible scenarios for the cause of the accident, and it did not reach till the moment any conclusion in this regard”, Mokadem said in the press conference attended by Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal.
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Eleven British aircraft are on standby in Cyprus to help airlift thousands of British tourists from Sharm el-Sheikh as part of a British evacuation plan, airport authorities said.
