Hossam Kamal, CEO of Egypt Air

By The Editor -

Did 2011 turn out better than expected? How does 2012 look?

Hossam Kamal - We are confident that Egypt is now on the right track. We have of course had a difficult year, particularly for passengers travelling to Cairo, which has been shaken by political instability. While business traffic was less affected, tourist traffic suffered greatly. However, 2012 looks set to be much better, thanks to a more stable political situation. We have therefore resumed the expansion of our network, particularly to regional destinations in Africa and the Middle East.

 

How is this relative political stabilisation reflected in your network?

 
H. K.- We have launched new routes to the Middle East from Cairo, including Erbil and Baghdad in Iraq, Abha in Saudi Arabia and Alexandria to Dubai and Jeddah. In Africa, we have also increased our frequencies to Nairobi. With our African Star Alliance partners, SAA and, more recently, Ethiopian Airlines, we are linking the whole of Africa via the hubs in Cairo, Addis Ababa and Johannesburg. In the near future, we also want to land in Tokyo as well as Guangzhou and Delhi. In North America, we still want to fly to Toronto and, in the longer term, Washington. The opening of these last two cities had been postponed due to the events of the 'Arab Spring'.
 

Is Cairo now a fully-functioning hub?

H. K.- Since the opening of Terminal 3 in Cairo in 2009, we have brought together all the Star airlines in a terminal designed for 11 million passengers. Last year we carried just over 6.5 million passengers, down from nine million in 2010. But we will continue to strengthen our network with more connections and have increased the percentage of transfer passengers to 20%, compared with 3% a few years ago.

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