EgyptAir is claiming to have put together a better formula for its previously aborted China route, reports Amirah Ibrahim Thirty months after the route was suspended, EgyptAir is flying between Cairo and the Chinese capital of Beijing again. On Sunday, a Boeing 777 took off from Cairo International Airport with 80 passengers on board. "The route will operate via four indirect flights through Bangkok, Thailand," said EgyptAir Commercial Vice-President Mohamed Munir. "We are optimistic about Beijing," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. Ever since the route was suspended in 2003, Munir said, the airline has "been working extensively to reach a formula that guarantees a successful operation, keeping in mind the continued increase in fuel prices." Munir said the new route was programmed based on a comprehensive study of EgyptAir's network of operations in the Far East. The company operates four direct flights to Osaka and two to Tokyo, in Japan, as well as two flights to Bangkok, and two to Bombay, India. The Bangkok service used to serve as a collection point for passengers from Sydney, Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Seoul. "We have two agreements with Thailand Airways to transfer our passengers beyond Bangkok to other Asian destinations that we do not go to, while we transfer their passengers beyond Cairo to African destinations," Munir said. He said the company's planes "used to stay on the ground in Bangkok for more than 13 hours." A decision was thus made to better make use of that time by "operating the Beijing route through Bangkok". The new route will be facing intense competition from other regional carriers. Emirates airlines, for instance, operates two daily flights to Beijing from Dubai, as well as a daily flight to Cairo providing a connection to Beijing. Discounting much of the competition, Munir said that, "passengers who want to go to Beijing from Cairo are either tourists or businessmen. For tourists, we have put together competitive packages that include our domestic destinations -- which no other carrier can offer." He also argued that the plane's two-hour stopover in Bangkok is comfortably short for businessmen who are looking for "the most convenient offer in terms of timing, connections and price." In any case, Munir said, the overall Far East, and Chinese market in particular, provides "very strong potential for many airlines". EgyptAir's target is to achieve a movement of 31,000 passengers a year. For now, the cargo business for Beijing flights already appears very promising. "The cargo spaces on our flights are fully booked for the coming three months, with a capacity of 15 tonnes per flight," said Sherif Galal of EgyptAir's airline company. He also predicted an increase in cargo needs originating from Beijing. The Beijing route has also been the target of critics who said EgyptAir ignored a feasibility study that recommended establishing a route to Shanghai, a city where Egyptian businessmen have close commercial ties. "While Shanghai is the biggest commercial Chinese city with relations with Egypt," Galal said, "we considered other factors as well, one of which was the international importance of the airports in both cities. Beijing airport is ranked number 18 among the best and biggest airports in the world, with an annual 40 per cent growth rate, and huge traffic movement estimated at 30 million passengers a year. Shanghai's airport, on the other hand, is ranked number 35." EgyptAir's earlier Beijing flights, which only ran for three months in 2003, were the longest routes being operated by the carrier after it cancelled its flights to Los Angeles and Sydney due to annual losses of $60 million (on the Sydney route). At the time, Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafiq said that if the Beijing service recorded even a quarter of the Sydney route's losses, "he wouldn't hesitate to shut it down." Three months later, the flights were cancelled; widely blamed on both the outbreak of the Iraq war and the spread of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus in the Far East, the Beijing route was also reportedly causing some $30 million in losses. (Two years ago, EgyptAir hired a US consulting company, Sabre, to re-organise its international network. Sabre recommended the closure of 14 international and three domestic routes.) Just as the earlier Beijing flight may have been a victim of the SARS virus that crippled air transport to the Far East from all over the world, this time there are fears that bird flu may wreak a similar sort of havoc. Although China has reported three outbreaks of bird flu in the past week, the country also insists that there have not been any documented human cases of the flu. While the virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia since late 2003, Galal seemed confident that the situation this time was different from the previous crisis involving SARS.
