Nov 05, 2015 · MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspendedallflights from Russiato Egypt, the most popular tourist destination for Russians, as several ...
Nov 05, 2015 · MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin ordered the suspension of allRussian passenger flightsto Egypt on Friday until the cause of a deadly plane crash at the ...
Putin Suspends Flights From Russia to Egypt Amid Security Fears
Photo
Tourists going through security on Friday at the Sharm el Sheikh airport in Egypt.Credit
Mohamed El-Shahed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular foreign tourist destination for Russians, until the cause of a mysterious plane crash that killed 224 people over the Sinai Peninsula can be established.
Mr.
Putin’s decision was the first breach in what has largely been a
consistent response from Russian and Egyptian authorities to the crash
on Saturday. Until now, the two countries have been playing down the possibility of terrorism — even as Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said it was likely a bomb and President Obama said “we are taking that very seriously.”
A
Kremlin spokesman said that Mr. Putin’s decision did not mean that the
crash was caused by a terrorist act. Mr. Putin ordered that measures be
taken to ensure that the roughly 45,000 Russian tourists already in
Egypt could be brought home safely.
Samples from the wreckage from the crash site in the Sinai Peninsula have been taken to Moscow for examination.
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“Russian
specialists have collected swabs and scrapes from all fragments of the
aircraft, luggage and soil,” the Russian minister for emergency
situations, Vladimir Puchkov, said in remarks broadcast on national
television. “The necessary samples have been taken from all items which
might contain traces of explosives. All these samples have been
delivered to Moscow and are being thoroughly examined now.”
The
Russian government has not ignored the theory that the plane was felled
by a bomb, but it has certainly played it down, and Mr. Putin had
admonished other leaders for jumping to conclusions before investigators
had analyzed all the data.
Russian
officials did not say whether its decision to suspend flights was based
on new information from the investigation. They said only that the
safety of Russian citizens was paramount. With other countries banning
flights and taking extraordinary measures to get people out of Sharm el
Sheikh, Moscow made the move to match those efforts in case the crash
does turn out to have been caused by a deliberate explosion.
According
to a European official who has been briefed on the crash investigation,
the cockpit voice recorder captured a sound aboard the Russian jet that
was thought to be an explosion. Investigators are trying to confirm if
the timing of the sound corresponds with the abrupt end of the flight
data recorder.
More than 25 flights a day travel to Egypt from Russia, according to the Russian Tour Operators Association.
On
Friday, a day after announcing that it would resume flights to Sharm el
Sheikh to bring roughly 20,000 of its citizens home, , the British
government said it was trying to do so with heightened security measures
in place.
“This
is a hugely complex operation,” the prime minister’s office said in a
statement. “We continue to work closely with both the Egyptian
authorities and the airline carriers to get people safely home as
quickly as possible, “but the sheer scale of the task poses a number of
logistical complexities.”
The head of Russia’s civil aviation
agency, Alexander Neradko, said the country will halt flights to and
from Egypt until the cause of the plane crash over the Sinai Peninsula
can be established.
Russian
officials said a command center had been set up in Moscow with the
government agencies involved in figuring out how to repatriate Russians
from Egypt.
Tour
operators anticipated some resistance from tourists being hauled off
the beach and back to their chilly homeland before their vacations were
up. It might require an official evacuation order, they said.
“We
are in contact with tour operators and tourist agencies to prevent
panic, to coordinate the work between all the organizations involved,”
Aleksandr Osaulenko, one senior tourism official, told Russian news
agencies. “Right now we are collecting information about the cities
where Russians are, how many, how they can be transported, etc.”
Anna
Podgornaya, director of Pegas, a major Russian tour operator, said that
in 2011 and 2013 the Russian government ordered its citizens
repatriated because of violence surrounding the political upheaval in
Egypt.
“At
the time, we had to persuade people to leave,” Ms. Podgornaya said.
“This was difficult, some would refuse to go despite anything.”
The
Russian government announced a tentative plan on Friday to bring
citizens home as close as possible to their scheduled return dates.
The
authorities in London have been working with a number of British
airlines — easyJet, Thomson Airways and Monarch Airlines — to bring
British citizens home from the Sinai Peninsula. The British government
had said that passengers traveling from Sharm el Sheikh to Britain would
be permitted only one small carry-on bag, for “essential items.”
On
Friday morning, easyJet said that the Egyptian authorities had
interfered with the repatriation flights, although Egyptian officials
said they were cooperating, and Monarch said that departures would
proceed as planned.
Only
a few flights appear to have made it from Sharm el Sheikh to Britain;
about 4,000 British citizens were expected to return on Friday,
according to British news reports.
Hossam Kamal,
the Egyptian minister of civil aviation, said in a statement on Friday
that Egypt was working with Britain, although he cautioned that the
effort would be done “in the light of the resources of the airport and
in accordance with international security regulations.” He said eight
flights would leave for Britain rather than the originally scheduled 29.
An
official at the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on behalf
of the ministry, called the easyJet account “not correct,” saying the
decision to limit flights was a matter of capacity and “organizational
procedures.”
Betraying
annoyance at the decision by British carriers to restrict checked
baggage, Mr. Kamal said in his statement that the decision would only
worsen the situation at the Sharm el Sheikh airport because it did not
have room for the more than 120 tons of luggage that would be left
behind.
The
Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday that it
would take unspecified precautionary measures to enhance the security of
flights to the United States from the Middle East.
“While
there are no direct commercial air flights from Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt,
to the United States, these enhancements are designed to provide an
additional layer of security for the traveling public, and will be
undertaken in consultation with relevant foreign governments and
relevant passenger and cargo airlines,” Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary
for the Department of Homeland Security, said.
The
cause of the crash of the Russian jet, which could be the result of an
explosive on board, a catastrophic mechanical failure, human error or an
accidental explosion of fuel, remains a mystery.
An
affiliate of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the
crash, and Mr. Obama’s comments were the first direct statement by the
president that the crash might have been caused by something other than a
technical malfunction.
In
London on Thursday, Mr. Cameron was more emphatic about the cause,
saying that it was “more likely than not a terrorist bomb” that had
brought down the plane.
Egyptian
officials have said that the suggestion that a bomb had brought down
the plane was not based on facts from their investigation.
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