What brought down the EgyptAir aircraft from a normal cruising altitude of 37,000ft in mild weather, killing 66 people on board, among them three children, still remains unclear.
Thursday’s crash of the Airbus A320, which has an excellent safety record as the best-selling medium-range airliner in the world,  has baffled aviation experts.
Whether caused by terrorism or mechanical failure, the crash of MS804 into the Mediterranean, en route from Paris to Cairo, is the latest blow to Egypt’s efforts to rebuild a struggling economy after five years of political turmoil.
The 2011 revolution, the mayhem that followed and the downing of a Russian airliner last year have brought down an economy (which was once one of the most promising and fastest-growing tourism markets in the region) to the knees.
And in March, an Egyptian man who wanted to see his ex-wife hijacked an EgyptAir flight and forced it to divert to Cyprus.
Bad news keeps coming to derail a fledgling recovery in the tourism-dependent Egyptian economy.
The drop in tourism revenues has complicated the task of bridging a $12bn annual funding gap expected in the coming few years.
In the fiscal year to June 2015, tourist receipts stood at $7.4bn, compared with a peak of $11.6bn in 2009-10.
Tourism directly employed 1.3mn people, or 5.2% of Egypt’s workforce, in 2014, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.“But its indirect contribution exceeds multiples of that,” said Hany Farahat, a senior economist at Cairo-based CI Capital Holding.
The crash could “ worsen unemployment, affect consumption and other sectors linked” to the tourism industry, he said.
The number of foreign visitors arriving in Egypt peaked in 2010 at 14.7mn, an almost three-fold increase in 15 years.
But next year, as former president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown and revolutions swept the Arab world, the numbers fell to 9.8mn.
The Russian jet crash, which killed 224 people on October 31, dealt a severe blow too.
Russia, Britain and Germany suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh.
Tourist arrivals in the first quarter of 2016 were 40% lower than a year earlier, according to the government.
The holiday industry now accounts for about 3.5% of Egypt’s GDP, central bank data show, compared to 5% before 2011.
Egypt is suffering from a crippling foreign-currency crunch that has slowed economic activity and kept investors away.
No longer can the Arab world’s most populous nation fall back on the generosity of its oil-rich Gulf allies, who have provided billions of dollars in aid since 2013.
The aviation industry each year spends an estimated $6bn for pre-emptive actions to ensure every aircraft flies safer.
But the precious 66 lives lost in the MS804 crash is a grim reminder of enduring aviation security gaps; and the disaster should bring about fool-proof improvements in airline safety measures with transparency and professionalism.
Putting better defences in place against all possible scenarios - terrorist, mechanical, weather, or deliberate adversities - is the best way to do it.

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