CAIRO, Nov. 5 (Aswat Masriya) – Thomas Cook travel agency and Thomson Airways, owned by German TUI group, cancelled all flights to Sharm el-Sheikh until November 12, following British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond advise “against all but essential travel by air to Sharm el-Sheikh.”

Hammond said earlier Thursday there is a "significant possibility" an Islamic State-affiliate downed the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Sinai earlier this week.

Hammond's comments were echoed by British Prime Minister David Cameron just before the latter began talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi who began a three-day official visit to the UK yesterday, amid public protests and calls on Cameron over the past week to rescind the invitation in objection to Egypt's human rights record under Sisi.

Cameron said that it's going to take some time before people can be flown back to Britain from Sharm el-Sheikh. He added that Britain "can't be certain" that the Russian airliner was brought down by a "terrorist bomb", "but it looks increasingly likely that that was the case". 

On Saturday Oct. 31, an Airbus A321 operated by a Russian airline disappeared from the radar at 31,000 feet 23 minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport heading to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 passengers and crew on board.

Thomas cook said in a statement Thursday the agency will be seeking to repatriate all 1,700 customers currently present in Sinai's Sharm el-Sheikh resort. The agency also made accommodation arrangements free of charge for their customers.

Thomson Airways, on the other hand, offered a full refund to its customers.

The black boxes of the downed charter flight were recovered on the day of the crash and the contents of the flight recorders are currently being analysed. Investigations into the causes of the plane crash are ongoing.  

In what Egypt described as a “premature” decision Wednesday, the British government suspended all flights heading back and forth from Sharm el-Sheikh to the UK citing a "significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft.”

The statements coincided with the release of an audio recording Wednesday by IS-affiliates in North Sinai, formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis before renaming themselves "Sinai Province”, when for the second time the group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The militant group had published a statement on social media claiming responsibility just hours after the debris was discovered across a vast stretch of desert in an area called Hasna, a claim that was dismissed both locally and internationally.

Some 1.5 million Russian tourists have visited Egypt since the beginning of 2015, an Egyptian tourism official told Aswat Masriya.

Last year, 3 million Russians arrived in Egypt, the tourism minister said. Russian tourists represented around a third of all tourists flying to Egypt last year. 

The incident will likely take a heavy toll on Egypt's tourism sector, a main source of hard currency that has been hit hard over the past five years due to political and security upheavals.

Reuters reported that shares in holiday companies Thomas Cook and TUI Group fell on Thursday after Britain stopped flights to a major Egyptian tourist resort, raising the possibility of cancellations and a drop in demand for holidays to Egypt.

Last August, Egypt signed a three-year contract worth $22 million annually with global marketing and advertising agency JWT to promote Egypt as a tourist destination internationally.