British Tourists Left Stranded as Egypt Turns Back Rescue Jets

Only 8 out of 29 flights out of Sharm el-Sheikh have been permitted

Hundreds of British tourists stranded in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh waited anxiously Friday for flights home as budget carrier easyJet said the Egyptian government had disrupted some of its flights out of Sinai, the site of a Russian jetliner crash.

Tensions were high and an irate British tourist, who had waited at the airport since early morning hours, harangued U.K. Ambassador John Casson with angry shouts of: “When are we going home?”
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 the 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.
Two other carriers, Monarch and British Airways, said they still planned to operate flights back from Sinai on Friday.

Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, said there would be eight flights in all to the U.K. on Friday, instead of the 29 planned earlier. He said the British airlines are flying without passengers’ luggage, while Sharm el-Sheikh airport’s storage can hold no more than 120 tons of luggage left behind.
“This big volume will affect the smooth operation of the rest of the domestic and international flights,” said Kamal, adding that a cargo plane would carry bags separately for each flight.

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.”
“Why all of a sudden is everything on hold,” asked one of the stranded British tourists, Carla Dublin. “We don’t know what’s going on.”
Casson, the ambassador, tried to reassure the tourists, saying that British authorities will “continue to work until we have everybody home.”
“There are challenging, difficult issues to work through, this is a busy airport and we need to make sure people leave in a way that is safe,” he said.
Early in the morning, the Egyptians carried out expanded security checks as dozens of busses, ferrying British and Russian tourists, waited outside the airport, the line stretching up to a kilometer (half mile) as police inspected each vehicle.