Sharm el-Sheikh flights 'could be disrupted until Christmas'

Foreign secretary insisted a emergency measures to screen everything that goes on to planes will last 'for as long as it takes'

Foreign secretary Philip Hammond (PA)

Flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh could be disrupted until Christmas, foreign secretary Philip Hammond has said as the Government plans emergency measures to help stranded British holidaymakers.

David Cameron made the decision on Wednesday evening to ground all UK-bound flights from the Egyptian holiday resort amid fears that the Russian plane crash in the Sinai desert last week may have been caused by a bomb.

Mr Hammond said the Government was working with Egyptian authorities and airlines to work out short-term measures to safely bring back as many British tourists as possible, but with 20,000 estimated to be stranded in the resort, it could take days to repatriate them all.

He said it could take much longer for regular flights to Sharm el-Sheikh to resume, suggesting that normal flight timetables may not resume until early next year.

"I can't tell you whether that will be days, weeks or months,” Mr Hammond told Sky News. “We very much hope that it will be possible, hopefully before the Christmas-New Year rush, to declare Sharm el-Sheikh safe and to start to resume normal flight operations between the UK and Sharm.

Mr Hammond added that 19 flights that were due to leave the UK for Sharm el-Sheikh today and would have brought tourists home have been cancelled, but said he hoped measures would be in place to allow airlines to bring holidaymakers back to the UK from tomorrow.

However he stressed that emergency procedures to screen everything going on to planes at Sharm airport will last “for as long as it takes”, saying authorities on the ground will "only allow those planes to take off when they are absolutely confident that the measures they have designed have been fully implemented and we can absolutely assure the safety of those aircraft".

Mr Cameron will chair a meeting of the Government’s crisis response committee this morning and the transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin will update MPs on the situation with a statement in the House of Commons.

Mr Hammond added: "We're working with the airlines and the Egyptian authorities now to put in place emergency short-term measures that will allow us to safely bring back the British tourists who are there in Sharm," Mr Hammond said on Sky News television.

"We expect those to be in place by tomorrow so that people whose flights were due out yesterday or today should start to move out tomorrow," he said.

"Those emergency measures will remain in place as we bring out the British tourists who are currently in Sharm el-Sheikh over the next week or 10 days.”