British ambassador to Egypt heckled at airport as budget airline says eight planned flights back to the UK will no longer operate

The UK government’s attempts to return stranded British holidaymakers from Sharm el-Sheikh have descended into chaos, as easyJet contradicted senior UK and Egyptian officials over claims that Cairo was blocking unscheduled “rescue flights”.

Two easyJet flights left Sharm on Friday morning, but other passengers at the airport were sent back to their hotels, with the airline saying Egyptian authorities had prevented a further eight planes from arriving.



Russian plane crash: tourists return from Egypt amid reports of bomb in hold - live Read more

Egypt’s civil aviation ministry denied it was blocking any flights but said the numbers were limited by airport capacity.

In extraordinary scenes, Britain’s ambassador to Cairo, John Casson, was heckled by irate passengers who shouted: “What is the problem and when can we go home?”

About 3,500 Britons have suffered delayed flights, amid mounting British government suspicions that a Russian jet that crashed on Saturday with 224 passengers on board was brought down by a bomb.

Carla Dublin, travelling with her two teenage daughters, confronted Casson, telling him: “We were told we were leaving today. Now we are being told that the Egyptian government is arguing with David Cameron about allowing in flights.

“Why are you stuttering?” she demanded, as the ambassador attempted to respond.



Egypt’s minster for civil aviation, Hossam Kamal, said: “The British airline [easyJet] wants to schedule 18 flights at the same time and wants to transport British passengers from Sharm el-Sheikh without their luggage, which we would have to transport later.

“This constitutes a huge burden on the airport because its capacity does not allow for that.” Kamal said eight flights overall would depart for the UK on Friday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An easyJet employee talks to stranded tourists waiting at the airport to be evacuated from Sharm el-Sheik. Photograph: Thomas Hartwell/AP

Casson also denied that extra flights to the airport had been blocked, echoing Kamal’s comments about the scale of the operation and saying progress was being made.

He told journalists: “There are just challenging logistical issues involved in making sure that flights can leave and arrive in a busy airport in line with international regulations in a way that can be safe. We are working through those issues. We have very good collaboration and our expectation is to get as many people home as soon as possible.”

“There has not been blocking of flights,” the ambassador added. “We’re just making sure we work through logistical issues so that each flight arrives in good order.”

In the latest of a number of statements on its website on Friday morning, easyJet said restrictions to UK flights from Sharm meant eight planned flights would be suspended.

Other airlines sending planes to Sharm on Friday to pick up UK tourists, including British Airways and Monarch, said they were operating as planned. Monarch was to fly five planes out – including three “rescue flights” – and BA’s one scheduled flight in and out of Sharm was going ahead.



Monarch (@Monarch) Our flights are currently on the way to Sharm. We expect all our aircraft to depart as planned later today https://t.co/Le6vQjp2SJ

That suggests that the Egyptian issues with the easyJet flights were more of an operational nature than any specific threat, as the airport tries to cope with an influx of extra flights on a busy day, as well as additional security procedures. Monarch would be turning around its planes at Sharm at a quieter period of the day, later on Friday afternoon. EasyJet had planned to operate eight more flights than scheduled.

EasyJet advised passengers due to fly out in the next 48 hours to try to extend their stay by two days.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tourists gather at check-in counters at Sharm el-Sheikh airport. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA

Thousands of British holidaymakers who have been stranded in the Egyptian resort for the past three days had been expecting to come home on Friday. Some passengers had gone through security at the airport when they received a text message from the airline telling them the flights were cancelled. Visibly upset, they went back through the airport and on to coaches to take them back to their hotels.

Earlier on Friday morning, Patrick McLoughlin, the UK’s transport secretary, said the Egyptian authorities had been assisting with the evacuation and he hoped that by the end of the day everyone at the resort who had been waiting to return to the UK since Wednesday would be back home.The Foreign Office advised against all travel through the airport on Wednesday night.



McLoughlin said the planes would be returning without luggage in the hold and that travellers would have to wait another seven to 10 days for their bags to be returned to them. This was because the government was “not wholly satisfied” with the security checks in place at the airport, he said.

All we know about the baggage arrangements is what we saw on the easyJet website Ian Griffin, passenger

Stressing that the government was receiving “huge cooperation” from the Egyptian authorities in the work being done to strengthen security at the airport, McLoughlin also said Britain would be willing to extend the flight ban to airports in other countries if it felt that was necessary.

Passengers preparing to board flights back to the UK were told they would be allowed to travel with a laptop-sized case only and that their baggage would be sent on a separate flight and delivered seven days later after being screened.

In a sign of further wariness, the Dutch carrier KLM told passengers leaving the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Friday that they could take only hand luggage. A statement on its website said the measure was “based on national and international information and out of precaution”.

As tempers frayed among the passengers waiting to leave, eight-year-old Tilly Lou Stevenson asked her mother, Sheryl: “Why can’t we go home?” The family, trying to return to Gatwick, complained that their hotel had tried to charge them to remain while they were stuck in the Red Sea resort.

Ian Griffin, 51, a financial asset manager, was at the airport doors early on Friday morning. “It looks like we are panicking, but we’re not,” he said. “It’s just all the buses arrived at once. We’re on the 11 o’clock flight to Luton. All we know about the baggage arrangements is what we saw on the easyJet website.”

EasyJet had flown in extra staff on a private jet to help manage the return of their customers.

“We’re not sure what the procedure is,” said Griffin’s friend Ibrahim, who gave only his first name. “We don’t know if we have to fill in a form. It is a bit of a bitter end to the holiday but we feel pretty safe getting on the plane.”

Others were not quite so sure. Kay Ramis, 28, who owns a chain of mobile phone shops, was travelling with his wife, Hannah, and five-year-old-daughter, Sophia. “[The security] doesn’t look very different to when we arrived,” he said. “It is a good thing the British embassy people are here, and we don’t know what they are checking behind the scenes.”

Sophia added: “Towards the end of the holiday it got a bit frightening. We’re not so bothered about the luggage. It’s just summer clothes and we can manage without them.”

On Thursday night, the day after the British decision to suspend flights, President Barack Obama said the US was taking “very seriously” the possibility that a bomb caused the plane to crash. He spoke out on the subject during an interview with a radio station in Seattle.