Pricing official: domestic prices to fall by 20 percent with Expresslaunch in June CAIRO: Egypt Air announced Thursday the official launch of its online portal for booking travel and tracking cargo shipments. Due to service initiation, Egyptian and foreigner ticket pricing for domestic destinations has been unified resulting in a 10 percent average increase for Egyptians and 30 percent average decrease for foreigners, an Egypt Air pricing official told The Daily Star Egypt. Wael El Demerdash, pricing manager at Egypt Air, said the company plans to maintain its current domestic pricing scheme until the launch of Express, its low-budget domestic route subsidiary, next June. Prices are then expected to fall by 20 percent on average, he said. The launch of the website follows the introduction of e-ticketing services on all domestic and some international routes last December. Introduction of new services is part of the company s modernization campaign launched in 2002 to enable it to compete as the government continues to liberalize the sector. The company s new portal features standard booking and payment services and seat, meal and other flight option selection services. For cargo, tracking is available by entering the designated codes assigned to each shipment. Despite improving on the old website, which only offered flight schedules and company information, the portal suffers from several inactive links and some layout problems making the text in some dialogue boxes illegible. Egypt Air Chairman Atef Abel Hamid announced last year a series of planned improvements to company services scheduled for 2007 to help the company cope with international and domestic competition. The company now controls more than 60 percent of domestic flights. In late September, the company signed with Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer for six E-170 jets to be operated by Express. The 76-passenger airplanes are valued at about $100 million each, although a final deal value has not been disclosed by either side. In October, the company received the first two of 12 Boeing 737-800s, part of a $900 million (LE 5.1 billion) deal scheduled for full delivery by the end of 2009. The narrow-body aircraft seats 160 passengers and will be used to expand company operations on short and medium-range routes to destinations in the Middle East and Europe, Abdel Hamid said.
