Brussels Airlines cancels Sharm-el-Sheikh services

Brussels Airlines has scrapped a series of planned charter services to the Egyptian holiday resort Sharm-el-Sheikh. The airline had been planning a schedule of 10 flights with an Airbus A320 from June 29 to the end of August on behalf of tour operator Thomas Cook Group. Sharm-el-Shaikh lies near the southern tip of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula; there has been a series of terrorist attacks by Islamists against Egyptian government forces in the peninsula in recent years. A Brussels Airlines spokeswoman said that an internal safety assessment conducted on plans to fly into Sharm-el-Sheikh had advised against flying there, so the flights had been dropped. She noted that Lufthansa Group, of which Brussels Airlines is now part, has a policy of not flying to Sharm-el-Sheikh, so the Belgian company was aligning itself with that stance.<br/>