Egypt received on Friday the first commercial flight by Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) from Kiev after a two-year flight suspension that was imposed following the crash of a Russian airliner in Sinai in October 2015.

The UIA flight, which landed in Cairo on Friday, was carrying 186 tourists, according to sources at Cairo International Airport.

Sources atEgypt's civil aviation ministry told Al-Ahram Arabic news website that four flights from the national Ukrainian airline will be running on a weekly basis as a preliminary stage before adding more flights to the airline's schedule.

The capacity of each plane is 188 passengers, the sources said, adding that larger planes will be operated at a later stage.

Charter flights from Ukraine to Egyptian cities were not suspended following the 2015 crash.

In 2017, nearly one million Ukrainians visited Egypt; an 85 percent increase from 2016.

Last March, National Egyptian airline EgyptAir announced the resumption of flights to the Russian capital Moscow starting 12 April, after Russia’s biggest airline Aeroflot said that it would resume commercial flights to Cairo on 11 April, more than two-and-a-half years after Russian flights were suspended following the crash of the Russian airliner, which killed all 224 people on board.

The flight suspension took a toll on Egypt’s tourism industry – a key source of hard currency – as Russian tourists have traditionally contributed strongly to tourism in Egypt.

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