Two days after all flights between Britain and Sharm el-Sheikh were suspended, the first of some 20,000 British tourists who were stranded at the resort are on their way home. Egyptian officials are restricting the number of flights, after initially canceling all of them, according to U.K. carrier EasyJet.
The development comes one day after President Obama said "there is a possibility that there was a bomb on board" the Russian Airbus that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula last weekend. Also on Thursday, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said the jet had "more likely than not" been taken down by a bomb.
Today, British investigators tell the BBC that they "believe a bomb was put in the hold prior to take-off," the news agency reports.
As of midday Friday (local time), one EasyJet flight from Sharm el-Sheikh to Britain had already taken off, with another pending, the airline says on its website. The airline adds that eight of its scheduled flights are still not authorized to leave Sharm el-Sheikh's airport.
The situation has caused confusion, particularly at the crowded Egyptian airport.
"Easyjet gave no reason for the ban," Larry Miller reports from London for NPR's Newsdesk unit. "A diplomatic spat between the U.K. and Egypt was one suggestion. At the airport, the British ambassador was accosted by angry travelers demanding to know why they weren't going home, but he refused to respond while the cameras were rolling."
Another British airline, Monarch, has canceled all Sharm el-Sheikh flights through next Thursday. The airline plans to get five flights out of the resort's airport today.
Since Saturday's crash, several airlines have been avoiding the Sinai Peninsula; today, "French-Dutch airline KLM is also restricting passengers flying from Cairo to hand luggage only," the BBC reports.
Multiple investigations are under way to determine what brought Metrojet Flight 9268 down with 224 people aboard, with competing theories being offered by officials in Russia, Egypt, the U.S., and Britain.
Officials in Russia and and Egypt have said that claims that terrorists brought down the plane are mere speculation. On the day of the crash, Russian authorities raided the airline's headquarters and opened a criminal case against it, while also dismissing claims by an ISIS affiliate in Egypt that it had brought the plane down.
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