The violent clashes and chaos which have been sweeping Egypt for more than two weeks have shaken the aviation business, Amirah Ibrahim reports Two thirds of the Egyptian airline fleet has been grounded. All service activities related to airports and airlines are either suspended or suffering. The result of more than two weeks of protests is a complete disaster to air transport business and industry in Egypt. Few hours after the violence had turned the country into chaos, a massive operation to evacuate thousands of tourists and foreigners from Egypt was launched through all the country's airports. During the early days of the crisis, Cairo airport was a scene of chaos and confusion as thousands of foreigners sought to flee the country while countries around the world scrambled to send in planes to fly their citizens out. The other five airports in Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada, Luxor, Aswan and Alexandria witnessed a similar situation. US military planes transferred American citizens to Larnaca where they were carried onboard US airlines home. Even Iraq sent three planes to Egypt -- including the prime minister's plane -- to evacuate Iraqis who, ironically, had once fled to Egypt to escape the violence in their own country. All airlines operating to Egypt have either suspended operation completely like Air France, or reduced operation by 65 per cent like Lufthansa. As for Egyptian private airlines, they have suspended operation and even closed offices till further notification. The national carrier, EgyptAir, maintained its regular schedules to help evacuate the foreigners. "We had to operate only during the curfew hours, and consequently cancelled all night flights, merged some routes together and enlarged the planes to transfer more passengers," explained Hussein Massoud, chairman of EgyptAir Holding company. According to Massoud, there are two phases to a contingency plan. "The first was applied between 28 January and 6 February when we had to set arrangements day by day, in accordance to the state of stability. Through this phase we adopted a number of procedures to help ease the troubled traffic; remove penalties for no show and also removing fees on changing destinations and timings. We had to be flexible because it was a state of high emergency," he said. The second phase which starts 7 February is in place but will be adjusted week by week. Figures released by the carrier show that it came to cancel about 60 per cent of its flights which means that two third of the fleet, consisting of 74 aircraft, is grounded at present. "We turned some daily flights into two or three weekly flights. We also merged some destinations of low load factors such as merging Brussels with Paris," Massoud said. But for a corporation, which has nine affiliate companies, the damage is much worse. "All our other activities are badly affected such as ground services which provide in-flight services to more than 30 airlines, more than 30,000 meals to our flights and other 18 airlines operating to Egypt and the technical branch which serves more than 20 airlines. With no passengers coming or leaving, duty free shops and tourism branches are almost dead. We are facing a complete disaster," Massoud commented. He pointed to a number of procedures adopted to control expenses such as postponing training courses, limiting official missions abroad to the minimum, as well as controlling the use of materials and tools to reduce the cost of operation. "We are committed to fulfil our financial obligations such as paying the instalments of the new planes, thus we are studying a number of alternatives to make use of the grounded fleet. These include operating through the fourth and fifth freedoms from a point to another out of Egypt," explained Massoud. Massoud asserted that cutting salaries or dismissing employees is out of the question. Egyptian airports are equally suffering. "Our revenues rely on two sources: aeronautical activities, such as landing, hosting and air navigation fees, and non-aeronautical activities, which include all commercial projects inside and around the airports buildings," explained Fathi Fathallah, chairman of the Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation. "Duty free shops, car park, cafeterias, hotels and all other similar activities are hired to investors under contracts stipulating that we get either a minimum fixed fee or a percentage of the revenues. The negative impact of the crisis threatens Egyptian airports deeply," Fathallah added. Fathallah released figures to Al-Ahram Weekly showing that Egyptian airports have been paralysed. Over the week before the eruption of chaos, between 18 and 24 January, 67,000 passengers arrived to Sharm El-Sheikh airport and 61,000 departed. Hurghada airport on the Red Sea recorded 60,000 arrivals and 60,500 departures for the same week before the crisis. Last week recorded 14,000 arrivals and 61,000 departures at Sharm El-Sheikh while the figures dropped in Hurghada to 3,950 arrivals and 62,000 departures. Cairo International Airport had hit a record of 120,000 passengers daily before the crisis, but receives only a few thousand at present. Taba and Abu Simbel airports recorded zero traffic movement. "If the situation continues as it is or becomes worse, investors and partners may break the contracts and the airports will face a dark destiny," commented Fathallah. European, US and Asian governments had issued warnings advising against all non-essential travel to Egypt. Many European tour companies cancelled trips to the country until 23 February, others left the cancellations open until further notice. In the meantime, many foreign governments ordered non- essential government personnel and their families to leave Egypt. Others, like Germany, expanded their travel warning to the entire country, including the Red Sea resort towns. The end result was that one million tourists departed Egypt in 10 days.
