By Mohamed Attia
EgyptAir continues during the current period to celebrate its ninetieth anniversary, as it was established in 1932 to become the first airline to be established in Africa and the Middle East, and the seventh in the world.
The Egyptian Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation headed by Eng. Mohamed Saeed Mahrous, represented by the management of the Cairo Airport Company headed by Magdy Ishaq and the Egyptian Airports Company headed by pilot Ahmed Mansour, was keen on the participation of EgyptAir on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of its establishment by placing the event logo on all screens of Cairo International Airport and Egyptian airports.
On the other hand, despite the difficult economic situation that the air transport sector is witnessing in the recent period due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, EgyptAir, headed by pilot Omar Abul-Enein, and under the directives of Minister of Civil Aviation Mohamed Manar, seeks to double its weekly flights in 2026 from the number of flights currently executed per week, which amounted to 385 flights.
It is also planned that the EgyptAir network will reach 96 cities in 2026 instead of 65 cities currently, with an increase of 47%, when the planes to be agreed upon in the coming period are available.
The national air carrier also plans to increase its fleet for most of the wide and medium models by conducting negotiations with the manufacturers and leased companies to meet their needs so that the company can open new destinations in Africa, the US and the Far East and increase the frequencies for those destinations in June 2022.
The company also completed the establishment of a new low-cost activity belonging to EgyptAir targeting new segments of Egyptians and foreigners and covering new points in the network.
For his part, Pilot Amr Nabil, President of EgyptAir Airlines, confirmed that the company is always keen to upgrade all its activities and services to serve the Egyptian economy.
He indicated that the company has in mind a plan to modernise the air cargo fleet, in addition to modernising the fleet of passenger planes through a specific plan to expand the movement of goods by air by increasing the number of cargo planes or exploiting the spaces available on passenger planes to meet the growing demand for Egyptian exports.
He added that during the outbreak of the coronavirus, air freight activity witnessed a remarkable increase compared to that before the pandemic, as Egyptian exports, especially agricultural crops of fruits and vegetables, were a great demand in the European market and the Far East.
Regarding the field of activating the incoming foreign tourism movement to Egypt, chairman of EgyptAir Airlines Nabil added that, in co-operation between the Ministries of Civil Aviation and Tourism and Antiquities, an initiative was launched to integrate beach and recreational tourism with the cultural tourism product by linking the Nile Valley cities with the Egyptian tourist cities to facilitate for tourists undertaking beach and cultural tourism.
This takes place in one program where EgyptAir operates a direct line between Luxor and Sharm El Sheikh, and the airline is studying the operation of other lines according to the volume of demand.
“We also operated the Luxor/London line after a hiatus of years, as well as the Luxor/Madrid, Prague/Hurghada and Budapest/Hurghada lines to connect the European capitals with the tourist cities directly,” Nabil said.