SOHAG airport, Egypt's most recent air hub began actual operations early this week. On Saturday it received the first flight, arriving from Cairo, operated by EgyptAir's Express Airline. "The new route will operate with two flights weekly, on Saturdays and Tuesdays. We will monitor the demand to increase frequency as we did with Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada and Marsa Alam routes," explained Captain Helmi Rizq, chairman of Express airline. According to Rizq, the airline is expanding operations by adding new services to facilitate the transfer within Egypt on one hand and to regional destinations on the other hand. "We successfully transferred one and half million passengers in the fiscal year 2009/10 on 26,000 flights operated with 75 per cent load factor," Rizq told the media. The first flight to Sohag was welcomed by Sohag governor Muhsen El Nomani who called on the carrier to provide more services through the airport to neighbouring destinations. "The airport mainly serves our people in Upper Egypt who represent the bulk of Egyptian labour employed in the Gulf countries," El-Nomani stated. "Creating a strong network with Sohag in the centre will help attract more investment projects to Upper Egypt," he added. Built on 18 feddans, Sohag Airport is the second biggest airport in Egypt following Cairo International. The LE400 million airport is located 25km south of Sohag and occupies the site of a military airport. The terminal building consists of two international halls for arrivals and departures, a VIP hall, duty-free shops and security gates. The total capacity of the airport is 400 passengers per hour. The carrier has launched three new regional routes from its new destination Marsa Alam on the Red Sea. Last month, Express started operating two new services from Alexandria and Sharm El-Sheikh to the resort of Marsa Alam based on sharing the costs between both airline and airport. The carrier is operating services to Marsa Alam, a BOT airport operated by the Kuwaiti Al-Khurafi group, under an agreement reached in 2007. The carrier has also added a weekly flight to Marsa Alam from Luxor while another flight is scheduled to operate from Abu Simbel in October. According to Rizq, the new domestic operations allowed the airline to extend its services significantly. Last week, Express also launched three new services to Amman, Kuwait and Jeddah from Marsa Alam, each with two flights weekly.
