PUTIN SUSPENDS EGYPT FLIGHTS – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  Up to now, the Kremlin has resisted the growing belief by Western intelligence agencies that the Russian airliner that crashed in the Sinai was brought down by a bomb.  From The New York Times: 

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular tourist destination for Russians. The move came as several airlines imposed bans on checked luggage over concerns that a bomb in a cargo hold brought down a Russian charter jet in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, killing all 224 people on board.

Mr. Putin signed off on a recommendation by Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s internal state security agency, that the flights be suspended, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, confirmed to the Interfax news agency. It was not immediately clear when the suspension would begin.

Mr. Putin also ordered that measures be taken to ensure that the Russian tourists already in Egypt, including the resort city of Sharm el Sheikh, from which the doomed Russian jet departed, could be brought home safely.

The halting of flights was the first breach in what has largely been a wall of silence about the crash from Russian and Egyptian authorities, which have until now played down the possibility of terrorism — even as Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, and President Obama, have raised it as a possibility. Nearly all of the dead were Russian citizens.

COMMENT:  You get the feeling that only a small amount of the information known to intelligence agencies is being released to the public.  Suspending flights is a major step for Russia, an admission that its airliners are being targeted, and targeted successfully.

There has always been a nightmare scenario in which terrorists paralyze the international air system, and close off whole countries to air travel.  I have no idea whether that scenario is being played out, but I'd be concerned.

November 6, 2015