Russia has sent the first of three teams of inspectors to Egypt to examine security conditions at airports there following the Metrojet plane crash which killed all 224 on board .

Deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich's announcement follows Russia's decision on Friday to suspend passenger flights to Egypt because of security concerns.

Security at the airport, and others around Egypt, have become a central concern as investigators probe the plane crash on October 31, 23 minutes after it left Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 on board.

The US and Britain have said the cause was probably a bomb planted on the plane and Russia has halted flights to Egypt until security at airports is improved.

Mr Dvorkovich did not give details of specific issues on which the inspectors might focus.

Sources have said Sharm el-Sheikh's airport has an alarming record of gaps in security, including a key baggage scanning device that is often not working and lax searches at an entry gate for food and fuel for the planes.

Seven officials involved in security at the airport, several for more than a decade, told the Associated Press news agency of the gaps. Several said the malfunctioning scanner had been noted in security reports to their superiors, but the machine was not replaced.

One of the officials, involved in security for planes, also pointed to bribe-taking by poorly-paid policemen monitoring X-ray machines.

"I can't tell you how many times I have caught a bag full of drugs or weapons that they have let through for 10 euros or whatever," he said.

Egypt's aviation minister and his spokesman did not respond to calls for comment. Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has said British officials sent a security team to evaluate the airport 10 months ago, in co-operation with Egyptian officials, and were satisfied with the results.

British Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin suggested on Friday that screening of checked-in bags was insufficient, telling the BBC that it had imposed its own additional checks on its flights "because we weren't wholly satisfied with the way screening had been done".

All bags are put through a scanner as passengers enter Sharm airport, and carry-on bags go through a second machine at the gate before boarding.

But a scanner in the sorting area for checked-in bags is oftennot working, the airport officials said.

One said the breakdowns in the 10-year-old CTX scanner were because operators did not use it properly - "human stupidity" he said - rather than technical faults.

"I have seen people unplug it to save power," he said.

Another official said the staff made sure the scanner was operating well enough whenever international experts came to review measures at the airport.

"We only care about appearances," he said. "Once they (airport chiefs) hear something is coming, suddenly everything gets fixed. We wish we had visits every day."

But several officials argued that it was "not that important" that the machine broke down because when it was working, it was used to scan only a sample of the bags, not all of them.

The scanner was one of at least five granted by Britain, and another scanner is used at Cairo's airport but only to scan luggage for flights to London and Paris, according to two security officials there. In Sharm el-Sheikh, the selective use of the scanner is even more arbitrary, three officials said.

On Friday, Russia suspended all flights to Egypt, joining Britain, which had halted flights to Sharm el-Sheikh. Ireland has also suspended flights to the Red Sea resort, while at least half a dozen western European governments told people not to travel there.

Empty charter planes have been flying to Sharm el-Sheikh to bring home stranded Russian and British tourists. But these flights banned passengers from checking in luggage, suggesting a concern about security and luggage-screening procedures.

Egyptian authorities at Sharm el-Sheikh airport have begun questioning airport staff and ground crew who worked on the Russian flight and have placed some employees under surveillance, according to airport and security officials.

The officials from Sharm el-Sheikh airport said security checks were often lax at a gate into the facility used to bring in food and fuel. Local hotels provide food to some flights and deliver the food directly to the planes, they said.

Guards at the gate often let such deliveries go in without full searches because they know the delivery men, the officials said. Guards in a diligent mood are often bribed with a meal or two to pass the lorries unsearched to save time, they added.

"You are not going to search your friend or your friend's friend," one official said. "It's rude."

A retired senior official from Egypt's Tourism Ministry, Magdy Salim, said airport guards regularly skipped security checks for friends and co-workers and often did not search people "out of respect to save their time if they look chic or if they come out of a fancy car".

"Airport security procedures in Egypt are almost (all) bad" and marred by "insufficiencies," Mr Salim said.

Earlier, the head of the joint investigation team, Ayman el-Muqadem, said a noise was heard in the last second of the cockpit voice recording before the plane plummeted. The announcement bolstered US and British suspicions it was brought down by a bomb.

However, Mr el-Muqadem warned it was too early to say what caused the plane to apparently break up in mid-flight, adding that analysis of the noise was under way.