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Having lived right next to Sharm for six months (stationed there), I can't imagine fog having anything to do with this. If they were on final approach, yes, but taking off?? No.

Upon our arrival in Sharm on C-141s, the pilots brought us down in evasive maneuver fashion: Starting at 10,000' AGL, point the nose straight down and do a corkscrew until 1000' AGL. Made all of the officers hurl. After nearly 30 hours of sitting backwards with no windows, it was pretty cool. There was an intel report warning of possible SAM use by terrorists. THAT WAS 15 YEARS AGO!!

Sharm sits on the point of the Sinai, basically. There is an island visible in the distance as well, that the aircraft would possibly have passed over. No boat required for a SAM-7, IMHO. 737-300s are pretty safe - even if you grenade one engine on takeoff a competent pilot can recover. Rudder failure is another story, but the ADs have been out there for how long now?

AD on the 737-300 has been out for years, but I'd like to see where these planes used to be. This sounds like a pretty dodgy charter company, who knows what their maint was like? As for fog in Sharm, the temp was cold enough, if the dew point was at the right level you could have fog.

After flying on MS, and seeing how beaten down their fairly new planes were, I wouldn't doubt that a much poorer charter would have worse planes!