LONDON // A British tourist plane heading in to land at Sharm El Sheikh came within 300 metres of a missile, newspapers reported on Saturday.
The near-miss involved a Thomson Airways plane carrying 189 passengers from London to the Egyptian resort on August 23. British authorities concluded it was not a “targeted attack”.
The incident happened around two months before a Russian tourist plane leaving the Red Sea resort plummeted from the sky into the Sinai Peninsula last Saturday (October 31), killing all 224 people on-board.
“We investigated the reported incident at the time and concluded that it was not a targeted attack and was likely to be connected to routine exercises being conducted by the Egyptian military in the area at the time,” a spokesman for the British government’s department of transport said of the near-miss.
According to the Daily Mail newspaper, the Thomson Airways pilot took evasive action and landed safely. Holidaymakers were not told about the incident.
“The pilot was in the cockpit and saw the rocket coming towards the plane. He ordered the flight turn to the left to avoid the rocket, which was about 1,000 feet away,” the newspaper quoted a source as saying.
“Another Thomson plane was also flying into [Sharm El Sheikh] at the same time and saw the rocket.”
“The crew were told the rocket was from an Egyptian military exercise, but with what has happened there is a lot of fear,” the source added. “The incident left staff petrified.”
A Thomson spokesman said the company could confirm that an event was reported by the crew of flight TOM 476 on August 23.
“Upon landing into Sharm El Sheikh, an initial assessment was conducted and the event was immediately reported to the UK [department of transport] in line with established protocol,” he said.
Britain suspended flights to Sharm El Sheikh on Wednesday after saying it feared a bomb may have brought down the Russian jet, with Moscow following suit on Friday.
Thomson Airways has been repatriating Britons trying to return home following last Saturday’s crash. The first such flights back to Britain landed on Friday.
* Agence France-Presse