Europe's leading carrier, Lufthansa, recently revealed plans to transform Cairo into the leading air traffic hub in the continent. The company's East Africa manager tells Amirah Ibrahim how the carrier is reacting to developments in the aviation industry The German carrier Lufthansa started its operations in Egypt 46 years ago with two weekly flights from Cairo via Munich to Frankfurt, and only 25 employees. Today the company is a market leader in Egypt, offering 17 weekly flights from Frankfurt, with an average of 3,600 seats a week. "We have the highest market share of all European carriers in Egypt," Peter Emerich, East Africa manager of Lufthansa, stated proudly. According to Emerich, the company has come so far by working closely with Egyptian authorities. "We are aware of what tourism means for the Egyptian economy. Thus, we operate a lot of flights not only to Cairo, but also [three weekly] to Alexandria," he said. By mid-2000 Egypt had became Lufthansa's largest and most important market in Africa. "The Egyptian market grows every year as far as incoming passengers are concerned and is doing very well in outgoing traffic, particularly for business and tourism purposes." "Business travel is growing nicely in and out of Egypt, and travel for tourist purposes is rising by six to eight per cent annually. And as far as I know, this trend will continue." Emerich expressed his appreciation for the Egyptian government's efforts to develop civil aviation over the past few years. He said the Egyptian government has been "very smart in investing in the construction of new airports and the expansion of existing ones such as it has done at the Borg Al-Arab, Sharm El-Sheikh and Cairo airports. The latter's capacity will reach 20 million passengers annually by 2007. They would not have done that if the air transport market was shrinking." "We support those efforts as we believe that Egypt is far behind its potential in terms of the number of tourists and passengers that it could receive." He expects that the number of incoming tourists to Egypt will increase to 10 million annually in a couple of years and to 15 million in the near future. "Egypt must be ready with new airports, perfectly organised with beautiful duty-free shops." Emerich believes that Egypt could benefit from better marketing. He said that Egypt's image is very much connected with the Red Sea and its Pharaonic legacy. "You can get more people to Egypt by marketing the Mediterranean coast, for example, which is comparable to the coasts of Tunisia and Spain," he explained. Emerich highlighted the efforts of the United Arab Emirates to successfully turn the sea and desert of Dubai into a main tourism hub for many Europeans. "You not only can offer the sea and sand, but you can offer all the historical things, the wonderful oases and beautiful cruises on the Nile. Egypt is a country with a lot to offer, but the infrastructure needs to be there and then it needs to be marketed." He also pointed out that Egypt offers more bang for a traveller's buck since the flotation and subsequent devaluation of the Egyptian pound. "We can notice that some people who used to go to other areas such as Spain or Italy, are shifting to Egypt where they can get more value for their money." Earlier this year, Lufthansa revealed plans to convert Cairo into the largest air traffic hub in Africa. "What we do is that we always get more capacity into Egypt and at the same time try to expand into other parts," Emerich explained. "As Cairo is a strong provider of air transport movement it can feed the majority of air transport routes in the continent," explained Emerich. "At the moment we go from Cairo to Sanaa, Yemen, and from Cairo to Khartoum. In the future there may be other destinations in Egypt that will be used to transfer passengers to other parts of Africa," he concluded. In parallel, the carrier is studying two new connections between Egypt and Europe. "Our plan is to increase capacity to and from Egypt. As a carrier which runs scheduled operations, the most important thing is to have a proper mix between businessmen and tourists on board because they pay different fares," explained Emerich. The airline is also interested in connecting Egypt to Europe through more routes. After integrating Swiss Air two months ago, Lufthansa is now considering how to resume former Swiss Air routes to Egypt, without creating competition for its existing connections to Africa through Cairo. Lufthansa currently has a network covering 177 destinations in 73 countries, with a total of 12,700 flights a week. Together with its code-share partners, almost 24,500 flights are offered worldwide to 375 destinations in 93 countries.
