“However I know we are lucky and we are able to change our plans”.
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His claims raise questions about whether previous inspections by British experts missed security flaws at the airport – flaws that only came to light after the Metrojet airliner went down in the Sinai desert, killing all 224 aboard.
Concerns were also raised about unlit corners of the airport that were hard to monitor and security guards playing on their phones instead of manning X-ray machines.
Besides, the Egyptian president discussed current security measures in Sharm El Sheikh airport’s with its management and staff members.
Monarch will also operate its last flights on Tuesday.
Around half of the 20,000 Britons who were stranded in the resort have now been flown home.
Britain has provided security equipment to the airport, and teams from the Department of Transport have travelled to the Red Sea resort regularly to review standards.
Alarmed at the potential scale of losses, Egyptian officials have expressed frustration with Western governments for suggesting the Russian Airbus A321 had been targeted by Sinai-based militants before crash investigators reach their findings.
“They will come to Egypt peacefully and leave peacefully and we will do all we can to protect and look after them”.
“We had obviously booked our time off work, packed all our cases, booked the vehicle into the airport auto park and made all the arrangements and it was not until Friday that it said on the website that we would not be flying out”, she said.
The deputy head of Russia’s Union of the Tourism Industry, Yuri Barzykin, told Tass on Wednesday that Russian holidaymakers “should not dismiss the idea to relax at home” and should opt to holiday in Russia if they are finding alternatives to Egypt overseas too expensive.
Thomson Airways has confirmed that all flights from Sharm El Sheikh will return to the United Kingdom by Monday.
“We would prefer not to leap to conclusions investigating the causes of the Russian airliner crash”, he told reporters upon arrival.
Egypt will make every effort to keep tourists safe, President Abdel Fattah Sisi pledged Wednesday as he visited Sharm el-Sheikh in the wake of the suspected bombing of a plane packed with vacationers.
After greeting foreign tourists he said: “Our visit today aims to reassure people inside and outside Egypt”.
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Britain stopped flights to Sharm al-Sheikh four days after the passenger plane crashed shortly after taking off on October 31 from the Red Sea resort, pointing to the likelihood that it was brought down by a bomb. The Kremlin has insisted the decision to suspend flights does not mean Moscow believes the crash was caused by a deliberate attack.
