UAE airlines suspend Sinai overflights

A KT photo grab of a horrific video released by the Daesh purporting to show the Russian plane exploding in the skies.

UAE airlines and major European carriers said on Sunday they have stopped flying over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula where a Russian passenger airliner crashed on Saturday killing all 224 people on board.
Emirates said in a statement that it is currently avoiding flying over the Sinai peninsula until more information is available about the crash. "We are currently monitoring the situation," it said. Emirates flies twice daily to Cairo and flies over the Sinai on other routes in the Middle East and North Africa.
Dubai's budget carrier flydubai and Sharjah-based airline AirArabia also rerouted flights around the Sinai Peninsula.
A report quoting a spokesman for Etihad Airways, however, said the company would continue "to operate flights over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt with no evidence to suggest any ulterior motive in the tragic crash of the Russian passenger plane in the region".
The airline, however, was "complying with instructions by the Egyptian authorities to avoid certain areas of airspace over the Sinai Peninsula, which will affect only a handful of Etihad Airways flights", the reports said.
A Qatar Airways spokesman said there were no changes to Egyptian airspace rules and therefore no changes in the airline's flight schedules.
Air France and Lufthansa announced that they would stop flying over the area as a precaution while the cause of the Russian crash was investigated.
Germany's transport ministry warned the country's airlines not to use the same flight route above Egypt's southeastern Sinai Peninsula that the Russian plane took before it crashed.
A spokesman said that because of the crash the ministry has issued "until further notice a broad warning...for using a flight route in the southeastern Sinai".
At KLM, a spokeswoman said the airline had no flights scheduled in that area on Sunday so there was no need to review flight paths.
She said the airline would exercise caution in any future flights in the area.
A British Airways spokesperson said the airline would never operate a flight in a region until it was safe to do so.
"The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our top priority, and we would never operate a flight unless it was safe to do so. Our safety team continually liaises with the appropriate authorities around the world, and we conduct very detailed risk assessments into every route we operate."
The Russian plane crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Shaikh. The Kogalymavia flight with 214 Russian and three Ukranian passengers and seven crew members was bound for Saint Petersburg.
A senior official with Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee said the plane broke apart in the air.
"The disintegration happened in the air and the fragments are strewn over a large area," committee chief Viktor Sorochenko was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti news agency in Cairo, where he is part of an international panel of experts from Russia, Egypt, France and Ireland.
An Egyptian ground service official who carried out a pre-flight inspection of the Russian plane said that the Airbus A321-200 appeared to be in good condition.
"We are all shocked. It was a good plane. Everything checked out in 35 minutes," the official said. The closest the plane came to being in trouble, he said, was three months ago when the pilot aborted takeoff halfway through because of a system error.
"That's almost routine though," he said.
issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com