Sharm El-Sheikh Flights Suspended

Adam Hancock’s family only learned their easyJet departure to Sharm El-Sheikh had been cancelled when they arrived at Manchester Airport on Thursday morning

Germany’s Lufthansa Group cancels flights of subsidiary airlines to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh.

Sharm El-Sheikh flights suspended

A family of 14 were ‘gutted’ to learn their £4,000 dream holiday to Egypt had been cancelled at the last minute.

Adam Hancock’s family only learned their easyJet departure to Sharm El-Sheikh had been cancelled when they arrived at Manchester Airport on Thursday morning.

It was one of three flights to Egypt due to carry hundreds of passengers from Manchester Airport which were cancelled after Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond suspended all flights to Sharm El-Sheikh on Wednesday night.

Thousands also remain stranded in the resort as flights out of the country have also suspended following intelligence a bomb may have caused a Russian jet to crash killing all 224 on board.

What to do if you are stuck in Egypt or are due to travel out on holiday

A deserted Sharm El-Sheikh Airport departures hall below.


Mr Hancock’s family, from Rotherham, had arrived at Manchester Airport’s Terminal 1 this morning anticipating an easyJet flight would take them to Egypt.

After the 31-year-old crane controller was told by airline officials in the terminal the flight had been cancelled, he told the MEN: “We are gutted.”

“Obviously we’ve all been reading the news so I phoned easyJet yesterday at about 6.30pm and they told me 100 per cent that we would be flying,” he said.

“And then it’s cancelled. We’re devastated. Obviously things had moved on with what Hammond said last night. It’s just devastating for all the kids. But we understand there’s a threat and safety is the first priority,” he added.

Also travelling in the party were five children, the youngest aged six.

Eileen Thorpe, 62, had travelled from Galway in the Republic of Ireland to Manchester to join Adam and the rest of her family for the trip.

“I knew there had been trouble when I left Ireland. I kept in contact with the family and it looked like everything was going to be OK,” said Eileen.

“It’s just horrendous,” she said.

The family had purchased the holiday through another company, not easyJet.

Germany's Lufthansa Group announced Thursday it would cancel flights of its Edelweiss and Eurowings subsidiary airlines to the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheik, where a Russia charter jet took off Saturday before it crashed in the Sinai Peninsula.

Flights to Cairo would not be affected, the company said.

The announcement came a day after Britain canceled flights to and from the Sinai Peninsula, stranding thousands of British tourists at Sharm el Sheik, because of “intelligence and information” indicating that a bomb was the likely culprit in the crash that killed all 224 people aboard.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday repeated British assertions that it was “more likely than not” that a bomb brought down the Metrojet flight packed with Russian vacationers -- a scenario that officials from Russia and Egypt have tried to dismiss as premature speculation.

A group linked to Islamic State has claimed that it brought down the plane, a report rejected by Russian and Egyptian officials as not credible. Egypt is fighting an Islamic insurgency in the area where the plane crashed.