Grieving Russians piled flowers high at St Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport on Sunday, mourning more than 200 compatriots who died as they flew home over Egypt, and laid out candles in Moscow to spell out 7K-9268 - the number of the flight that crashed.
The Airbus A321 came down in a mountainous area of central Sinai on Saturday as it carried holidaymakers from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board.
President Vladimir Putin declared Sunday a national day of mourning for the victims of the latest in a string of disasters to afflict the Russian aviation industry.
"My wife's classmate died in the plane crash. She was flying for the first time and did not return," St Petersburg resident Yury told Reuters TV, standing by the makeshift memorial in Pulkovo Airport. "It's a nightmare for the whole country. It touched everyone, and it was our duty to come here."