SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — Hundreds of British tourists stranded in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh from where a doomed Russian plane took off last weekend, waited anxiously Friday for flights home as budget carrier easyJet said the Egyptian government had disrupted its plans to fly the Britons out of Sinai.
Britain had grounded all flights to and from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday, saying there was a “significant possibility” the Russian airliner that crashed last Saturday, killing 224 people, was downed by a bomb.
The Metrojet’s Airbus A321-200 crashed 23 minutes after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St. Petersburg, with mostly Russian tourists aboard.
U.K. authorities had approved flights back, starting Friday, though passengers were only allowed to take carry-on bags with them.
EasyJet had been due to operate 10 flights from the Red Sea resort but said eight would not be able to fly because Egypt had suspended them. “We are working with the U.K. government at the highest level on a solution,” easyJet said in a statement.
There was no explanation from Cairo on what had caused the disruption. Two other carriers, Monarch and British Airways, said they still planned to operate flights back from Sinai on Friday.
The development is likely to hinder Britain’s attempts to smoothly bring back the estimated 20,000 U.K. nationals in Sharm el-Sheikh. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said earlier Friday that “most of the people who were expecting to be home by tonight will be home by tonight.”
On the ground in Sharm el-Sheikh, employee Mohammed Abdel Fattah who works as a handling agent for easyJet, said two of the budget airline’s flights to the U.K. have been checked in. He told the rest of EasyJet passengers to return to their hotels, “until there are new updates.”
Meanwhile, the Egyptians carried out expanded security checks as dozens of busses waited outside the airport, the line stretching up to a kilometer (half mile) as police inspected each vehicle. Most of the buses were ferrying Russian and British tourists to the airport.
Russia and Egypt have dismissed Western suggestions that a bomb may have caused the crash last Saturday, saying the speculation was a rush to judgment and insisting the investigation must run its course. The United States and British leaders have stopped short of a categorical assignment of blame in the crash, but Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday it was “more likely than not” that the cause was a bomb.
The crash prompted companies to ground flights from and to the Red Sea resort, stranding thousands of tourists this week. Britain later said additional security measures would be in place, including only allowing passengers to carry hand baggage, while checked luggage will be transported separately. The carry-on measure applies only to those departing from Sharm el-Sheikh, British officials said.
Inside the crowded airport, British tourists said Friday they were just anxious to get home.
“We were in the first flights that were cancelled Wednesday night, we were already queuing to board,” said Amy Johnson, a 27-year-old British administrative assistant hoping to catch one of Friday’s EasyJet flights out of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Standing in a crush of hundreds waiting to pass through security, Johnson said she didn’t feel that British authorities have adequately supported the stranded tourists. “We’re being left to deal with this ourselves.”
Another tourist, Terrance Mathurian, a British builder travelling with his family, said they were told by hotel staff in the morning to head to the airport, following conflicting information. Looking at the long security line, he said that he “can understand why they have this situation here but personally, we’ve had no problems at all.
In an unusual decision, Dutch carrier KLM said it has instructed its passengers leaving from the Egyptian capital of Cairo that they can only take hand luggage on the plane departing Friday. A statement on KLM’s website says the measure is “based on national and international information and out of precaution.”
KLM, which has no direct flights to Sharm el-Sheikh, did not elaborate on what their measure is based on and nothing has been revealed so far from the ongoing investigation.
Security officials at the Cairo airport told The Associated Press that flight KL554 left for Amsterdam on Friday morning with only 115 passengers out of the 247 who were booked on that flight. The rest refused to leave without taking their check-in bags, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said his government’s decision was linked to lax security. “We have the impression that there are insufficient security measures there,” he told reporters in The Hague and added that the advisory did not cover the whole of Egypt.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. was taking “very seriously” the possibility that a bomb brought down the plane.
The Islamic State group, which has not generally pursued “spectacular” attacks outside its base in Syria, has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane, but Russian and Egyptian officials say the claim was not credible. Russia is conducting an air war in Syria against Islamic State militants who have promised retaliation.
Earlier this week, two U.S. officials told the AP that images from U.S. satellites detected heat around the jet just before it went down. The infrared activity could mean several things, including a bomb blast or an engine exploding because of a mechanical breakdown.
Egypt — which stands to lose millions of dollars from its vital tourism industry — maintains there is nothing wrong with the airport facility at Sharm el-Sheikh, which each year welcomes thousands of vacationers to the resort beside the crystal-clear Red Sea.
___
Associated Press Writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Danica Kirka in London and Michael C. Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.