ECONOMY: Egypt Rushes to Rescue Tourism

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Jan 6 2004 (IPS) - It was too late to save Flight 604, but Egyptian officials are moving quickly to save a fragile tourism industry.

A Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plummeted into the Red Sea Saturday morning shortly after take-off from the Egyptian resort Sharm El-Sheikh, killing all 148 on board. The Paris-bound flight was packed with French tourists returning home amidst heightened worldwide airline security. A number of flights were cancelled due to fears of terrorist strikes on commercial aircraft.

No distress call was received. The two flight data recorders, or "black boxes", lay amidst the plane’s wreckage nearly 1,000 metres below the sea, but within hours Egyptian authorities had ruled out terrorism as the cause.

Speaking live on Egyptian television, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher denied any terrorist involvement, and described the crash as a "tragic accident". Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafiq said that despite the global terrorism alert, the cause of the crash appeared to be "entirely technical."

Egypt has good reason to distance the crash from the dreaded T-word. Evidence of a terrorist attack could devastate its tourism industry, one of the main foreign revenue earners.

"If it’s proven to be terrorism, we’re sunk," said a travel agent in Cairo.

Egypt drew 4.2 million tourists who spent 3.4 billion dollars over the first nine months of last year. This was despite regional instability due to the Palestinian Intifada and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Officials are optimistic the tourism sector will survive the latest setback.

"Tourist movement was not affected after confirmation by Egyptian and French officials that a technical problem was behind the crash," South Sinai Governor Moustafa Afifi told worried tourism organisations. Flight arrivals and hotel occupancy in Sharm El-Sheikh were normal, he said.

"We’ve had no cancellations," said Mohammed Gamal, reservations manager at the Marriott Beach Resort at Sharm El-Sheikh. "Tourists are still arriving as usual."

Officials are challenging any reports that could undermine tourist confidence. Within hours of the crash a rumour had begun to circulate that Muslim extremists may have planted a bomb on the plane, which carried133 French tourists, in retaliation against a controversial French law banning the hijab (Muslim headscarves) in public schools.

On Monday a man describing himself as a member of an Islamist group in Yemen claimed in a call to an international news agency that the group had brought down the aircraft, and would carry out more attacks unless the French government revoked its ban.

Both Egyptian and French officials dismissed these claims as not credible, and warned against jumping to conclusions.

"The results of the search for the plane’s [flight data] recorders should be awaited first to know the truth," Kamel Rifai, chairman of the Egyptian Pilots Union said in a statement. "The only thing that can be figured out from the accident is that the pilot was overtaken by something sudden, so he could not send any SOS signals to the control tower before plunging into the sea."

Egyptian officials are also refuting allegations that the Egypt-based charter airline was allowed to fly its two planes despite a chequered safety record. Flash Airlines planes reportedly made emergency landings in Athens and Geneva during the last 14 months, once following engine fire and once due to an undisclosed "technical problem".

Swiss aviation officials said the charter airline was barred from landing in Switzerland in October 2002 after inspectors uncovered maintenance deficiencies on both the company’s 737s. Flash Airlines said it was barred due to a financial dispute, not safety issues.

An Egyptian civil aviation official confirmed to IPS that "minor safety deficiencies" were noted during a ramp inspection in Switzerland. He said the aircraft was sent to Norway for repairs.

"We received a final report [from Norway] that all deficiencies were corrected," said Ibrahim Mahmoud Negm, a safety inspector at the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority. "We followed up on the report and confirmed that the airline was safe to fly."

Negm dismissed concerns over the safety of Egyptian charter airlines. He said Egypt had achieved the highest level of certification following inspections by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

"Our regulations concerning commercial airlines are tailored from FAA regulations…and all commercial planes must meet international standards above those of ICAO," he said. "We have continuous surveillance and enforcement action to prevent issuing flight permission to planes with safety deficiencies."

Mohammed Souka, chairman of Cairo-based Scorpio Aviation expects tighter scrutiny of Egypt’s nine active private charter airlines in the wake of the crash, but says the industry’s safety record speaks for itself.

"This was the first and only fatal accident since private passenger carriers launched in 1980," he told IPS. "International airlines like Lufthansa, Alitalia and Gulf Air have signed inter-line agreements with Egyptian private carriers. Such airlines wouldn’t sign these agreements and put their passengers on our flights if they felt it was not safe."