A plane of Russia's Airliner Aeroflot arrives at Cairo International Airport, Egypt, on April 11, 2018. Egypt and Russia resumed their direct flights on April 11, 2018, after two years of suspension following a deadly Russian plane crash over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in late October 2015. (Xinhua)(psw)
CAIRO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Egypt and Russia resumed direct flights between Cairo and Moscow on Thursday after more than two years and a half of suspension.
The flights between the two countries were suspended after a bomb exploded on a Russian plane over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in late 2015, killing all 224 people on board, mostly Russians.
EgyptAir said in a statement Thursday that its flight to Moscow took off from Cairo International Airport as one of three such flights per week. The statement came hours after an Aeroflot flight from Moscow carrying more than 120 passengers arrived in Cairo.
The Russian flight suspension severely harmed the Egyptian tourism industry, for Russia used to be the biggest source country of tourists for Egypt, with some 3 million Russians visiting the most populous Arab state every year before the tragedy.
The plane bomb attack was claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group.
The Egyptians pin hope that the Russian flight resumption will be a big push for the currently ailing tourism sector, which is a main source of national income and hard currency in Egypt.
"It is surely a promising step and a very good beginning. We hope it will be followed by other good steps until the Russian tourism in Egypt comes back to normal," said Ammary Abdel-Azem, a tourism expert and former chief of the tourism companies division at the Chamber of Commerce.
"Tourism has been greatly affected since the suspension, for Russian tourists represented about 30 percent of the tourists that visited Egypt every year," Abdel-Azim told Xinhua.
The number of tourists to Egypt declined from 14.7 million in 2010 to 8.3 million in 2017 due to political instability and relevant security challenges.
Moscow and Cairo will discuss the gradual resumption of direct flights to other Egyptian cities after the resumption of direct flights between the two capital cities.
"Charter flights between Russian cities and the Egyptian Red Sea resort cities of Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada are more important, because Russian tourists prefer beach resorts to Cairo sites and monuments," said the tourism expert.
Britain, another major source country of tourists to Egypt, also suspended its direct flights to Sharm el-Sheikh after the Russian plane attack.
Ever since, Egypt has been working hard on improving airport security, spending a great deal of budget and bringing many foreign experts for regular inspections.
"EgyptAir offered a 50-percent discount for the first direct flights to Moscow, which is a good move. I believe it should also offer a 50-percent discount for domestic flights in Egypt to encourage Russian tourists who prefer to go to Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada rather than staying in Cairo," said Salah al-Nayal, another Egyptian tourism expert and CEO of a travel company.
"Chinese, British, French and Italian tourists like cultural tourism besides beach resorts, so a discount for international flights to Cairo will work for them, but Russian tourists mainly prefer the beaches so the discount should be extended to internal flights to Egyptian resorts," he explained.
Russia's Aeroflot airliner said in a statement that both the Russian and Egyptian airlines would offer daily flights from June 12 to July 2 to cope with heavy demand, referring to the increasing demand expected ahead of the FIFA 2018 World Cup that will be held in Russia in mid-June.
Egypt's ties with Russia have been growing since Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi came to office a year after he, the army chief then, removed former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to the mass protests against Morsi's one-year rule.
The tragic plane crash did not affect Egypt's relations with Russia, which later signed an agreement to build Egypt's first nuclear power plant in Dabaa city of the coastal Mediterranean province of Matrouh.