Air travel between Cairo and Moscow will resume in February 2018, Russia's Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov told reporters on Monday, according to Russian Tass News agency. Sokolov said that Russia was ready to sign the relevant intergovernmental protocol in the upcoming days to resume the direct flights. "It depends primarily on the Egyptian party," he said. The statement of the Russian transport minister come as Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting Cairo. In a press conference in Cairo earlier Monday, President Putin highlighted positive developments in security measures at Egyptian airports, in light of a recent Russian security agency report. "Soon I will be signing a memo to resume air flights to Egypt," he told the reporters in the press conference. Moscow grounded all civilian passenger flights to Egypt in 2015 over security concerns after a Russian A321 airbus crashed in Sinai shortly after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh. All 224 people on board were killed in the crash. The downing of the Russian flight has dealt a blow to Egypt's tourism industry, with tourist numbers dropping by some 50 percent in the first half of 2016 year-on-year. Russians make up the largest single tourist group in Egypt, contributing to about a fifth of foreign vacationers in the country as of 2015, according to official data.
