The Egyptians were not afraid of the noise

There will be no ban on Il-86 flights

Egyptian authorities have extended permission for Russian Il-86 aircraft to fly to this country until September 15. Deputy head of the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority Imad Salam reported this to RIA Novosti yesterday. So, there will apparently not be a sharp rise in prices for travel packages, which tour operators working in the Egyptian direction feared, this season.

Operators were concerned about the news that on March 7, the director of the department of state policy in the field of civil aviation of the Russian Ministry of Transport, Gennady Loschenov, sent a letter to the head of the Egyptian aviation administration, Samir Abdel Aziz, with a request to extend the permit for Il-86 flights. Il-86 aircraft do not meet modern requirements for noise and gas emissions. Therefore, they are prohibited from flying to most countries of the world, and in Egypt they have been working under temporary permits for five years. Replacing these capacious machines with some other ones will inevitably lead to an increase in the cost of air travel.

Taking this circumstance into account, the Egyptian authorities are extending the “temporary” permit for the Il-86 from year to year. They have not abandoned this practice even now. Already on March 23, the chairman of the Egyptian state tourism organization, Ahmed El-Khadem, who was in Moscow, announced that flights of Russian Il-86 aircraft would not be prohibited. Now this forecast has received official confirmation from the aviation department of the country of the pyramids.

According to Imad Salam, the IL-86 will be able to land only at two airports in the country - Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh. All charter programs of Russian air carriers, carried out using the Il-86, are aimed precisely at these two points. The Moscow-Cairo route is served by regular carriers (including Aeroflot) on modern Boeings and Airbuses.

The economic importance of Russian tourism for Egypt is exceptionally great. Last year, out of 9.2 million foreign tourists who visited this country, Russians made up 998 thousand. According to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, only Great Britain was ahead of us, sending 1.03 million guests. And directly behind us is Germany (966 thousand tourists). According to the same data, of the $7.6 billion spent by tourists in Egypt last year, Russians left $830 million there.

According to Ahmed El-Khadem, this season the statistical indicators promise to be even higher. In January-February, 198 thousand Russian tourists visited Egypt, which is 39.4% more than in the same period last year.

Mikhail KUKUSHKIN