DESTINATIONS North Africa
Cairo International Airport
to Larnaca in Cyprus, where he later freed the passengers and crew and was arrested. Although this incident proved not to
be terrorism related, questions have been raised as to how the hijacker was able to embark on the plane wearing what appeared to be a suicide vest with explosives. It is in fact the eighth reported hijacking incident involving an EgyptAir aircraft since 1976, according to Aviation Safety Network. It was later reported the suicide vest
was a fake, but that has not dampened the obvious security concerns. An Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said: “He’s not a terrorist, he’s an idiot. Terrorists are crazy but they aren’t stupid. This guy is.” Egyptian authorities had promised
to tighten airport security in the wake of the downing of the Metrojet Airbus A321 in October last year, where all 224 passengers died. Investigations later found that explosives had been smuggled onto the airliner, most likely at Sharm el Sheikh International Airport, and caused the aircraft to crash after departure from the Red Sea resort.
It is a similar issue in Tunisia where a mass shooting at a resort at Port El Kantaoui, north of Sousse, in June 2015 killed 38 people. This was the second serious terrorist attack to hit Tunisia in a couple of months, following a shooting at the Bardo museum in Tunis in March which killed 22 people. After the 2015 Metrojet crash in Egypt’s
32 ISSUE 4 ROUTES NEWS 2016
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Sinai region, many nations suspended flights to and from Sharm el Sheikh International Airport. In the UK, regular flights were suspended in November 2015 but special security measures in place permitted emergency repatriation flights to operate for 11 days. Since then the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has advised against all but essential travel by air to or from Sharm el Sheikh, although the resort is technically spared from the ban. However, the surrounding Sinai Peninsula has long been considered unsafe. The Egyptian Red Sea resorts have
become a popular leisure destination for European visitors due to its year-round warm climate, but restrictions mean that major airlines such as British Airways and easyJet have suspended flights into Sharm el Sheikh, while tour operators Thomson and Thomas Cook have cancelled all flights and holidays through most of this year.
A look at schedule data shows that
international capacity into Egypt has shown little change since the Metrojet crash last October with overall capacity actually up 5.7% in the November 2015- March 2016 window in comparison with the same five-month period in 2014-15.
w “After the Metrojet crash in Egypt’s Sinai region on
October 31, 2015, many nations suspended flights to and from Sharm el Sheikh International Airport”
IMAGE: AirTeamImages
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