President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi made a surprise visit to the Sharm el-Sheikh airport in a show of support for the region.
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Prime Minister David Cameron said it was “more likely than not” that the Russian plane from Sharm El Sheikh was brought down by a bomb on Saturday, which has caused flights to be grounded.
All 224 people aboard the Metrojet Airbus A321 were killed in the crash in the Sinai Peninsula, which took place shortly after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St. Petersburg.
There has been little mention of the incident on Egyptian state television.
Usually buzzing with foreigners on a leisurely holiday, Sharm el-Sheikh’s night-time tourist spots have also turned into deserted squares.
President Sisi said no effort would be spared to ensure holidaymakers’ safety but the impact on Egypt’s crucial tourism industry is already being felt, with Britain’s and Russia’s decision to suspend flights set to cost the country a few 260 million euros a month according to Egyptian Tourism Minister Hesham Zaazou.
While Russian Federation and Egypt said the statements were premature pending the official crash probe, Moscow’s ban on flights signalled that it was taking the bomb theory seriously.
At the airport yesterday, Mr Sisi promised that the Egyptian-led investigation into the cause of the crash would be conducted with “utmost transparency and integrity”.
The extended grounding is expected to deal a serious blow to Egypt’s fragile tourism sector, which counts on millions of Russian tourists flocking to the country each year for its Red Sea resorts, world-famous antiquities and warm winter weather.
“There’s a cultural problem here, and I’m not pointing the finger at the Egyptians – this is the case in a large part of the world”, he said.
“It’s impossible to radically change the systems of security, protection and control in a week or even a month”, Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, said Tuesday. Last year, 9.9 million tourists visited the country although that was significantly less than the 14.7 million who came in 2010. Therefore Sharm-el-Sheikh does not feature as a destination in TUIfly’s flight plan.
“The next day we were told we wouldn’t be going anywhere the following day either”, Mr Henderson, of Fronks Avenue in Dovercourt, said.
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A Sinai-based terror group affiliated with the so called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has claimed responsibility but Egypt and Russian Federation have consistently downplayed suggestIng that the crash is linked to terrorism.
