British Airways has announced that it will resume flights to Sharm el-Sheikh on September 15, pending approval from the UK government.
Sherif Barsoum, British Airways regional customer service manager, said that the company was still awaiting permission from the British government, which suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh in the wake of the Russian plane crash in October, according to Al-Borsa newspaper.
Barsoum said the UK government will probably accept the resumption of flights due to various improvements made to safety measures at Egyptian airports. He said that security measures are now 80 percent better than eight months ago, a fact that would positively influence the UK's decision.
The British government suspended its flights to Sharm al-Sheikh starting November in response to the October 31 plane crash in Sinai, which killed 224 passengers, most of them Russian tourists.
Sharm el-Sheikh is a major destination for British tourists, with a number of budget and charter airlines, including Easyjet, Thomson Airways and Thomas Cook Airlines, carrying visitors to the resort over the busy end of year season.
Britain, Russia and other countries suspended flights after the crash. While some have resumed travel to Sharm al-Sheikh, Britain sought deeper reassurances about the security arrangements at the airport.
Sharm el-Sheikh's tourism industry has been hard hit by fears of further air-transport related attacks and the resulting restrictions on air travel.
In late January, governor of South Sinai Khaled Fouda said that the resort's tourism industry had lost LE6 billion over the three months since the Russian air disaster, with most of those losses due to the plane's downing.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
