Despite what appears to be the somewhat farcical nature of the EgyptAir hijacking, any aeroplane incident is liable to raise more concerns in the mind of the travelling public.

The bombing of the Russian Metrojet airliner in October, and subsequent questions about the efficacy of Egypt’s aviation security, virtually ended the tourism industry in its Red Sea resorts. So Egyptian authorities will doubtless be mightily relieved that this hijacking does not have links to Isis-related terror.

Should the hijacker prove to be armed, or to havesmuggled aboard the “suicide belt” that he was claiming to wear, there will be more difficult questions for airport authorities to answer. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, it looks unlikely that the hijacker had any weapons.

It is so far unclear whether the hijacker made it to the A320’s flight deck (cockpit) or simply threatened crew and passengers in the cabin with his purported explosives. At a brief news conference, authorities stressed they had reacted as if the hijacker “represented the highest possible danger”.

If nothing was brought on board, an incident like this, experts say, could have happened on any plane. In this scenario, Egypt’s security authorities have no case to answer so far. Philip Baum, author of Violence in the Skies: A history of aircraft hijacking and bombing, said: “Generally it’s up to the captain of the aircraft to determine whether they have someone with suicidal intent. Obviously first you’d try to overpower them if so. But if they feel it could be managed by following his demands, a landing without anyone being hurt, then that’s what you’d do.

“It sounds like the 2006 Turkish Airlines hijack from Tirana to Istanbul: you had a lone hijacker claiming to carry explosives, but as it happened he had nothing on him.”