In an interview, Egypt Air’s Country Manager, Muharram Abdel Rahman, speaks on different issues affecting the airline’s operations in the country, ranging from an increase in its frequencies into Kano, plans to increase frequencies out of Lagos, to the relationship between Egypt and Nigeria, among others. Excerpts.

Why are you increasing frequencies to Kano?

We are here today to announce the increase of our frequencies into Kano and to announce the upgrade of our services/products to our customers in the North of Nigeria. You know that we are in Umrah season for Muslims, so we increased our frequencies to Kano and we have upgraded our flights to accommodate more markets from tour operators for all Muslim pilgrims going for Umrah.

Before now, we used to operate three flights to Kano but it is our pleasure to inform you that we will be increasing it to four flights weekly from May 1, 2022. These flights will be on Sunday, Tuesday and Saturday subject to approval by the Ministry of Aviation.

We have also upgraded our aircraft on the route to A350 which is good with onboard WI-FI, personal charging pots, personal TV screens for all passengers in our Economy class in a 2-4-2 configuration. Also, our aircraft has 26 on Business class, full flat bed seats, all in state-of-the-art facilities. We are in the process of increasing our frequencies also out of Lagos to 15 flights weekly subject to approval by the Ministry of Aviation. We have submitted our request to the Ministry of Aviation that we need to increase our frequencies to 15 from ten frequencies. We will fly double daily on Friday, Saturday, Sunday but our request is subject to the approval of the Ministry of Aviation. We are hoping that by next week, we can get the approval.

Egypt and Nigeria have a strong diplomatic relationship and we believe that these new frequencies will allow the two countries to further deepen this relationship. Now that we are flying from three points flying from Lagos, Kano and Abuja, we need to add Port-Harcourt and Sokoto. This is our plan for the future. We need to increase to give our teeming customers more choices and opportunities to connect to more than 120 destinations in the world to our hub in Cairo.

Egypt Air is a Star Alliance member, founded in 1962 and one of the oldest airlines in the world. By increasing our frequencies in the Nigerian market, we can save our customers the stress to travel to 120 destinations around the world.

We are arranging ten flights to accommodate Umrah with the first flight from Kano. We have upgraded to wide-body aircraft.

You are asking for more frequencies, is it an indication of the growing market for the airline? Could you also please tell us what your plans are for the next couple of months, years to remain very strong in this market?

Let me start first with Egypt and Nigeria. Egypt is considered in some cases to be the hub of Africa with a high population of about 120 million and Nigeria is considered to be hub of sub-Sahara with above 200 million. We are talking about two countries in Africa and Egypt Air comes to this country to connect the two countries together and we have a lot of things that are too common between these two countries. I came here to serve Nigerians better. Egypt Air is the bridge between these two countries to serve Nigerians.

We are in partnership with one of the strongest tour operators in Africa which is Wakanow and to help our customers to serve them well. Now is Umrah season, we are also calling on pilgrims from three points from Kano, Lagos and Abuja. We are doing our operations with more requests and another advantage that Egypt Air has is the location of Egypt in the middle of the world. You can connect to Europe easily and can connect to the Middle East easily too and any other destinations you can connect to through Cairo airport. I have to thank the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority for giving us all the support for our smooth operations.

Let us talk about air fare/ticket prices, any incentive to encourage people who want to fly with you?

Nigerians need to fly on Egypt Air. If I bring wide-body aircraft from Kano, you will not find seats available because a lot of people want to travel through Egypt Air. Even Lagos or Abuja market, as soon as we increase, you know that we have the market. Our flights from Lagos are full. That is the reason we need more frequencies to accommodate more passengers. People now need Egypt Air because of two reasons. Firstly, our price is affordable and everyone can have it. We are not increasing our fares because it is cheap and the services on our flights are the same services you can get on any other big carriers. The passenger that buys at cheaper fare gets top quality service. This is why people fly Egypt Air.

Also, we are encouraging students to travel with us. We have products for students which is 25 per cent discount and also for traders, families that need to travel together. We have products for teachers. We have all types of products in the market for all segments of people that is suitable for everybody. We flew B787 Dreamliner out of Lagos last week.

Does your airline fall into the category of airlines that operate old aircraft to Nigeria?

We call this flight manoeuvring in aviation meaning that in high season I can bring in wide-body aircraft and in low season, I will bring narrow-body aircraft. This is because the cost of operations is too high. I cannot bring wide-body aircraft when the cost is high in low season; this is why we make flight manoeuvres. I can tell you that there is no one aircraft that I can tell you goes to this particular route. In the Lagos market for example, we have wide-body aircraft Sundays and Fridays but for the rest of the week we are flying B737-800, a new aircraft. For today, we are operating with A350, flatbed and all the facilities. Tomorrow is B787 Dreamliner. We are taking a new product to Nigeria because they deserve it. All our flights do not require a transit visa. If you have many hours to connect from Cairo, passengers will be taken to the hotel. We are segmenting the market like I told you. We have packages to Egypt. You can get a visa on arrival now and we have so many packages. We have a package for business people going to Egypt.

This is peak season. Are there any promotional offers presently available for those who want to travel out and relax?

There are a lot for Christians going to Cairo. Christians travel through Egypt to Amman and to Tel Aviv. We are encouraging all groups to go through Cairo. We have a lot of Christian monuments in Egypt. Egypt is a historical place. You can find many Christian places pilgrims can visit in Egypt. We are increasing our frequencies because of a large number of people visiting religious sites. We are having flights in the morning so that they can connect to Tel Aviv. We also had a 20 per cent discount for passengers who travelled during the Easter season.

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