Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorized the resumption of direct scheduled air traffic between Moscow and Cairo International. According to Egypt Today, EgyptAir plans to launch 3x weekly flights on the route on February 1 alongside Aeroflot which is also expected to resume service.

According to the Russian media, Ural Airlines (U6, Ekaterinburg) is also planning to enter the market.

Although the decree is effective immediately, flights are not expected to resume before February.

The presidential decree establishes Cairo as the exemption from the ban on direct passenger flights between Russia and Egypt. This means that direct flights to other destinations, such as the tourist resorts of Hurghada and Sharm el Sheikh, are still banned.

Putin simultaneously authorised Russian tour operators to resume selling holiday packages to Egypt. The industry welcomed this decision but underlined that as of now, packages to Egypt will be likely expensive and less popular as most tourists would rather go to the Red Sea resorts than to Cairo.

The partial lifting of the ban follows a protocol signed by Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov and Egyptian civil aviation minister Sherif Fathi on December 15. The protocol itself was signed days after the presidents of both countries, Vladimir Putin and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, announced plans to resume air traffic during a high-level meeting in Cairo.

Direct scheduled air traffic between the countries has been suspended since a terrorist attack downed a MetroJet (Russian Federation) A321 in October 2015. Russian investigators concluded that the aircraft, flying from Sharm el Sheikh to St. Petersburg, had been brought down by an onboard explosive device. The disaster killed all 224 passengers and crew, nearly all of them Russian citizens.

The resumption of scheduled traffic is highly anticipated by the Egyptian tourism industry, as Russian guests used to constitute the largest national group arriving in Egypt. According to Egypt Today, in 2014 the number of tourists arriving from Russia peaked at 3.1 million.