Egypt Crisis to Drive up Holiday Costs... and You'll Queue Longer:
> Tourists Warned 'Higher Levels of Security' Will be Needed for Parts of the Middle East and North Africa if Bomb is Confirmed
- Foreign Secretary has called for global airport security to be overhauled
- Philip Hammond said extra security checks and delays could be permanent
- Officials say they are 99.9% sure a bomb caused a Russian jet to crash
- Government now warns of longer queues and higher charges for tourists
Posted; Daily Mail UK, 10 November 2015
British holidaymakers will face longer queues and higher charges if it is confirmed an Islamic State bomb caused the Russian air disaster, the Government warned yesterday.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said ‘higher levels of security’ would be required across large swathes of the Middle East and North Africa.
He also warned there are people in the UK ‘who would love to smuggle an explosive device’ on to a plane here.
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. He said travellers could face extra security checks and delays at airports could be made permanent
Mr Hammond insisted that, despite complaints of chaos at Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh airport, most British tourists will only ‘experience a delay of two or three days’ getting home if they wish to leave early.
He said some 5,000 British holiday-makers would be back in the UK by late last night, leaving approximately 14,000 in the Red Sea resort.
But Mr Hammond warned that, in future, tourists might have to get used to delays and increased ticket prices to keep them safe from IS, also known as Isil.
Egyptian investigators have yet to confirm whether a noise picked up by the ****pit voice recorder in the final seconds of last Saturday’s doomed flight, from Sharm El Sheikh to Russia, was the sound of the explosion.
Egyptian soldiers stand guard outside the entrance to Sharm airport. U.S. and British officials have reportedly said that they are 99.9 per cent sure that a noise picked up by the ****pit voice recorder in the final seconds of the Metrojet flight en route from Sharm el Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia was the sound of a explosion
But the Foreign Secretary reiterated the view of British intelligence officials that it was ‘more likely than not’ that the crash was the result of a terrorist bomb.
He added that there would have to be a major re-think of airport security in countries where IS is active if it turned out the group or its affiliates were behind the attack.
The areas which could potentially be affected – some of them popular with large numbers of UK tourists – include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Tunisia.
Mr Hammond told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: ‘If this turns out to be a device planted by an Isil operative or by somebody inspired by Isil then clearly we will have to look again at the level of security we expect to see in airports in areas where Isil is active.
‘What we have got to do is ensure that airport security everywhere is at the level of the best and that airport security reflects the local conditions – and where there is a higher local threat level, that will mean higher levels of security are required.
‘That may mean additional costs, it may mean additional delays at airports as people check in.
The air disaster last weekend raised serious questions about the security regime at Sharm El Sheikh airport.
Staff revealed that a CCTV monitoring station, including cameras overlooking baggage handlers, was not monitored half the time – and that camera networks throughout the airport are broken.
Workers speaking to the Independent on Sunday said it was ‘50-50’ whether somebody was in place at the camera station, where a security official was supposed to be staying alert for suspicious activity.
On Friday, Russia banned all flights to Egypt, two days after Britain imposed strict controls on flights leaving Sharm El Sheikh, and began evacuating its citizens. The Russian authorities yesterday said some 11,000 of its tourists had been brought home – twice the number of Britons, in half the time.
Britons are being allowed to travel home with hand baggage only. Hold luggage is to be flown back separately in the next week. They are being urged to stay in their resorts until they are told they have a confirmed place on a flight.
One British official quoted by Reuters news agency said it could take up to ten days to get all Britons out. Easyjet said it could take between three and four days to get all its customers back to the UK
British tourists queue as they wait for flights back to the UK. They are only allowed to take hand luggage on the aircraft with them
As the fallout from the disaster continued, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, Chief of the Defence Staff, claimed Britain was ‘letting down’ its allies by not bombing IS in Syria.
The head of the Armed Forces said it ‘makes no sense’ that RAF air strikes in neighbouring Iraq had to stop at the border when IS based its stronghold in Syria. He told Sky’s Murnaghan programme: ‘To an extent, yes, we are letting our allies down by not being a full player.
‘But my view on this is a far more fundamental and simple one in a way and it’s the point you make about going up to a border and having to stop there. In the most simplistic way it’s like being asked to win a football match but not being able to go into the opponents’ half.’
Last week Defence Secretary Michael Fallon seized on the apparent involvement of IS in the downing of the Russian plane to once again make the case for bombing raids against the terror group in Syria.
He claimed not doing so was ‘morally indefensible’. On the prospect of holding a vote to approve military action, Mr Hammond said yesterday that ‘we’re in exactly the same place that we’ve been for months’.
He added: ‘When we think that it’s right to do so and when we’re confident that there’s a consensus in the House of Commons, we will go to the House of Commons and hold a debate and vote.’
British embassy staff try to help tourists in Sharm. The president of Emirates airline Tim Clark said he expected the tragedy would result in demands for stringent aviation security worldwide
Russian emergency services work at the crash site. Sources at Sharm airport told how a baggage scanner was broken and security was lax at a gate used to put food and fuel onto the planes