Egypt Promotes Sharm al-Sheikh Airport Chief After Russian Plane Crash

Cairo: Egypt has promoted the Sharm al-Sheikh airport chief days after a plane crash that was claimed by Islamist militants and raised questions about plane security at the tourist gateway.

The news came on a day when both the UK and the US said that a bomb planted by a group affiliated with Islamic State, which operates in the Sinai Peninsula, may have been the cause of the incident which killed 224 people on the plane that was flying to Russia.

Egypt has said there was no evidence a blast brought down the plane and promoted airport chief Captain Abdul Wahhab Ali to take on extra duties at the national airport operator despite the security questions at Sharm, a resort popular with British, Russian and other European holidaymakers seeking winter sun.
"Abdul Wahhab Ali was chosen for this post because of his qualifications and capabilities," national airport operator Adel Mahjoub said in a statement.

Airport sources said the promotion would come into effect on November 6 and was not connected to the crash.

Egypt's civil aviation minister Hossam Kamal said his country adheres to international safety and security standards and there was no evidence a blast had brought down the plane.

Aside from the loss of lives, at stake is President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's assertions that he has brought under control militants fighting to topple his government, as well as tourism, a vital source of hard currency for Egypt.

At Sharm al-Sheikh airport, security appeared to have been tightened on Thursday with security forces patrolling the terminals and not allowing drivers, tour agents or others to loiter whilst awaiting tourist arrivals, a witness said.

But previous security breaches and the timing of the airport chief's promotion have raised some doubts about safety.

A day after Islamic militants claimed responsibility for downing the Russian plane, two men snuck through the fence at another Red Sea airport, in the resort of Hurghada, and were arrested before they reached the runway, a judicial source said.

The source said the youths were criminals planning a robbery but some local media had earlier reported that the men had reached an airplane bound for Spain.

"How did two youths who were not travelling, without passports, without visas, with nothing, get to the airplane?" asked Amr Abdelhamid, presenter of a current affairs programme on private television channel TEN.

In another incident in April, a donkey was found wandering around the carpark at Cairo airport and was captured on a video that went viral, with Egyptians tweeting sarcastic comments hashtagged in Arabic "how did the donkey enter the airport?"

"He thought and thought and exploited a security loophole," one person tweeted, mocking what they said was the official explanation for the breach, also carried in newspapers.

In 1997, Islamist militant gunmen killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians at an archaeological site near Luxor. Egypt's tourism industry took years to recover from the attack.