Engine Failure Forces EgyptAir Plane to Land

An EgyptAir plane bound for Cairo on its way from Abu Dhabi made a successful landing on Thursday in Sharm al-Sheik airport after one its engines broke down.

“The plane signaled a defect on its right engine but made a safe landing and was met by emergency services in line with standard procedure. No passengers were injured,” EgyptAir said in a press release.

The Egyptian national carrier said the 184 passengers on board were able to continue their journey to Cairo aboard another plane.

Earlier in the week, a man known as Seif Eldin Mustafa, an Egyptian-American dual citizen wearing a fake bomb belt hijacked an EgyptAir Airbus 320 with 62 passengers onboard and forced it to land in Cyprus at Larnaca airport. He later on surrendered to local authorities and put in custody. Egyptian judicial authorities have requested his extradition.

Egyptian civil aviation has been under fire since last October after the Russian Metrojet Flight, taking off from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport, was downed in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.

The crash prompted Russian as well as several western authorities to suspend flights to Egypt for security reasons.

Egyptian authorities last month claimed they met security requests of western and Russian security experts and hoped for a resumption of Russian flights to and from Egypt.

However, Russian officials reportedly indicated that the resumption of flights will be postponed as a result of Tuesday’s hijacking of the EgyptAir passenger plane.