Russian delegation to inspect Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada airports before flight resumption

CAIRO – 26 July 2021: A Russian delegation including officials from the tourism and health sectors will start a visit to Egypt on Tuesday to inspect the preventive measures applied at Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada airports ahead of the planned resumption of Russian flights to the Egyptian resorts.

The delegation’s visit will continue until the end of the week. They will inspect the precautionary measures against coronavirus before the flights are resumed starting 9 August, informed sources at the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation said.

The sources said the delegation consists of officials from the Russian health monitoring department, the Russian Scientific Research Institute and the Federal Agency for Tourism.

The delegation will arrive in the Egyptian capital from Moscow and will then head to Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada to follow up on the latest health measures.

Air flights between Russia and Egypt’s Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh will resume on August 9, 2021, announced the Russian embassy in Cairo on Friday.

“On August 9, five flights a week from Moscow to Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh will be carried out. A further decision to increase the number of flights on these destinations, including from other cities of our country, will be made as a result of the Russian delegation's visit to Egypt to assess the epidemiological situation,” the statement read.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call in April, to fully resume flights between the two countries, especially to the coastal cities of Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh, after six years of hiatus to these touristic destinations.

Flights between two countries were suspended at late October 2015 after a bomb downed a Russian flight carrying holidaymakers from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board, mostly Russian tourists. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group.

In January 2018, Russia decided to resume the flights to Egypt’s Cairo International Airport after Egypt has been implementing new, tighter security measures at all of its airports to meet the Russian demands necessary for the resumption of flights.