EgyptAir named at 2011 IATA world meeting hosts

Posted on 9 June 2010 in Events

EgyptAir will be the focus of air transport industry attention over the next year, with the 2011 IATA annual general meeting now confirmed to be hosted in Cairo. This follows the Star Alliance carrier hosting the Arab Air Carriers Organization's (AACO) yearly gathering in October.

“All air carriers compete to get such an opportunity,” EgyptAir holding company chairman Hussein Massoud told Arabian Aerospace, as the IATA AGM ended in Berlin yesterday.

Massoud said the events will highlight the Egyptian capital as a place for decision-makers to discuss strategy.

With the air transport industry facing many problems, he says, carrier representatives are drawn to high-level conferences. The popularity of the Berlin event is evidence of this, he added: “This gives an indication that, as long as there is a hot issue, people are interested in such meetings.”

EgyptAir is continuing to take delivery of new aircraft, with its first Airbus A330-300 due to arrive in August, several months earlier than originally planned, while four Boeing 737-800s and two more 777-300s will come later this year. Massoud says the carrier is in the next stage of its fleet-planning process, with the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 likely to be considered.

Meanwhile Air Arabia’s establishment of a base in Alexandria this month shows that national carrier is not immune to budget carrier competition.

But it has also highlighted an arrangement which prohibits private airlines such as Saudi Arabia’s Sama and NAS Air from operating to Cairo, even though technically the two countries have an ‘open skies’ pact. Massoud says: “You must continue the sentence: it’s open skies, but not when the parties will be hurt.”

This situation has led to a dispute, which started on 5 April when Saudi authorities banned EgyptAir from the Medina route, prompting a similar restriction against Saudi Arabian Airlines on the same route.

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