British Airways Suspends Flights to Cairo over Security Concerns

British Airways Suspends Flights to Cairo over Security Concerns

By MilborneOne - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2882401

British Airways and Lufthansa canceled all flights to Cairo on Saturday over unspecified security concerns.

“We constantly review our security arrangements at all our airports around the world, and have suspended flights to Cairo for seven days as a precaution to allow for further assessment,” British Airways said in a statement on Saturday.

The British Foreign Office has issued a travel warning for Egypt, updated Friday, which urges people to avoid “all but essential travel” to the South Sinai governorate and areas west of the Nile Valley and Nile Delta regions, outside of a few specific places. The office also cautions against any travel to the governorate of North Sinai “due to continuing criminal activity and terrorist attacks on police and security forces that have resulted in deaths.”

“There’s a heightened risk of terrorism against aviation. Additional security measures are in place for flights departing from Egypt to the UK,” the Foreign Office said in its updated travel advisory.

Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, said Saturday it also was suspending fights to Cairo, but later said flights would resume on Sunday.

“As safety is always a top priority for Lufthansa, the airline has today provisionally suspended its flights to Cairo while an evaluation of the situation takes place,” the airline said.

Tourism, a key source of foreign revenue for Egypt, has been recovering after visitor numbers dropped in the wake of a 2011 uprising and the 2015 bombing of a Russian jet, which killed all 224 people on board shortly after takeoff.

 

[Sources: CNN, The Washington Post, The Telegraph, DW]