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Five flights between Moscow, Cairo to be scheduled initially

Flights between Moscow and Cairo may resume in late February, according to the Russian transport minister

ALMATY, February 2. /TASS/. Five weekly flights are planned to be conducted between Moscow and Cairo after air service is resumed, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told reporters.

"At the moment, five weekly flights are planned to be conducted, [Russia’s national air carrier] Aeroflot will carry two of them and EgyptAir will conduct the other three," he said. "But these are just initial plans as talks are underway. The number of flights they will schedule is going to depend on the passenger demand," Sokolov added.

According to the Russian transport minister, flights between Moscow and Cairo may resume in late February. "The question about an exact date should be forwarded to the air carriers, they need to assess the passenger traffic, choose suitable dates and acquire slots at airports. Judicial issues are being looked into, and we don’t currently see any obstacles that could prevent them from being resolved by mid-February, and after that the actual demand and passenger traffic will make it possible for air carriers to announce the date of the first flights," he noted.

Air service issue

Sokolov said earlier that regular flights between Moscow and Cairo could resume in mid-February.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on resuming flights between Russia and Egypt after a two-year-long pause on January 4.

All flights between the two countries were cancelled in November 2015 after the explosion of an A320 jet, belonging to the Russian carrier Metrojet, over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015, which occurred less than half an hour after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh international airport. The blast claimed the lives of all 217 passengers and seven crewmembers. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) later designated the incident as a terrorist attack.

As a precondition for the resumption of flights, Russia called for considerably tightening security measures at Egyptian airports.