President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi visited Sharm el-Sheikh on Wednesday in an attempt to reassure the public following the plane crash.
Advertisement
Egypt stands to lose US$280 million (RM1.2 billion) a month from Britain and Russia’s decision to suspend flights after the Russian plane crash in the Sinai peninsula, Tourism Minister Hesham Zaazou said on Wednesday. United States of America air carriers for years have avoided flying into or out of Sharm al-Sheikh airport because of longstanding worries about security at the facility, U.S. officials said.
Sisi echoed that message during his visit to Sharm al-Sheikh.
Tourism was just about to pick up, he said, after five years of political turmoil that saw two Egyptian presidents ousted and battered the economy. “I can say that so far, what we got from the investigation didn’t trigger any action, technical action on our side, regarding the A-321 fleet”, said Bregier.
Tourists who are still in Sharm el Sheikh are being told to fly back by Tuesday (November 17) or make their own arrangements.
“There have been more Russian flights going out than flights to the UK”.
A few 80 percent of reservations have been cancelled and at least 40 percent of tourists have left the Egyptian resort since the crash, said Hussein Fawzy, head of the region’s chamber of tourist facilities.
“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.
Ministers initially suspended flights to and from Sharm after a Russian jet crashed over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.
“To be honest, we stopped flights to Egypt not knowing the final version (of the crash), but we did this as a preventative measure, as a precaution”, Ivanov noted.
Security officials at Sharm el-Sheikh airport told The Associated Press there have always been security gaps at the tourist hub, including a key baggage scanning device that often is not functioning and lax searches at an entry gate for fuel and catering deliveries.
An affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group active in Sinai claimed responsibility for the crash, which is the deadliest civil aviation disaster in Russian history.
Advertisement
An Egyptian-led 47-member investigation committee, including Russian, French and German experts, said Saturday that it was attentively considering all possible scenarios for the cause of the tragic accident, yet no conclusion was reached at the moment.
