Britain on Wednesday grounded all flights to and from Sinai, but Russia’s was more sweeping, covering all destinations in Egypt.
Advertisement
President Vladimir Putin ordered flights halted on the recommendation from his security chief, the Kremlin said, although Moscow had previously downplayed reports that a bomb caused the crash. “Above all, this concerns tourist routes”.
Egypt followed suit by saying it was too early to conclude a blast had brought down the plane. “These are necessary samples from all parts where traces of explosives could be”.
“We didn’t know when we would be going, if it would be one day, two days”, said Bull, a human resources manager from Bath.
Tempers ran high among the crowds of tourists in the airport departure lounge.
The suspension of flights has created a logistical challenge to repatriate an estimated 42,000 Russian and 19,000 British tourists. Egypt is not allowing British airlines to fly extra repatriation flights to bring back holidaymakers from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the airline easyJet said.
Other countries “did not show a level of cooperation and direct targeting of these organizations that we hoped for”, Shoukry said.
Thomson was originally scheduled to operate nine flights, with Monarch, Thomas Cook and Easyjet also hit by cancellations.
Egyptian authorities at Sharm el-Sheikh airport have begun questioning airport staff and ground crew who worked on the Russian flight and have placed a few employees under surveillance, according to airport and security officials.
“Why all of a sudden is everything on hold?” asked one of the stranded British tourists, Carla Dublin. We continue to work closely with both the Egyptian authorities and the airline carriers to get people safely home as quickly as possible.
He said the airport did not have room to store the more than 120 tonnes of luggage that departing passengers would leave behind.
Tourists wait in line at the security gate before the check-in counter at Sharm el-Sheikh global Airport, south Sinai, Egypt, Friday, November 6, 2015.
The speculation of a terror attack underscores Sharm el-Sheikh’s tenuous security situation.
Inside the crowded airport, British tourists said they were just anxious to get home.
Several officials said it’s the specificity of the chatter that has directly contributed to the US and British view that a bomb was most likely used. A decade ago, three coordinated bombs tore through the town, one of them targeting an upscale hotel, and killed at least 90 people.
SCOTS holidaymakers stranded in Sharm el-Sheikh are trying to make it back home tonight after a last minute flight was set up.
And The Times newspaper reported that electronic communications intercepted by British and United States intelligence suggested a bomb may have been carried onto the plane. A statement on KLM’s website said the measure was “based on national and worldwide information and out of precaution”.
Crash investigators earlier revealed an unidentified noise was picked up by the doomed aircraft’s on-board recorders in the final seconds before it broke up suddenly in mid-flight over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Russian officials are in contact with Egyptian authorities in Cairo to co-ordinate the beefed up security measures.
The intelligence sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, said the evidence was not categorical and that there is still no hard forensic or scientific evidence to support the bomb theory.
Advertisement
Hammond said the Department for Transport had aviation security experts who were constantly monitoring airport security around the world but that the Sinai crash made this especially urgent.
