CAIRO-BASED Egypt Air is set to order twelve wide-bodied aircraft, a media report said.
Gulf News quoted the airline’s chairman, Atef Abdul Hamid, as saying the carrier is considering either the Boeing 777 or the Airbus A330. Although each plane is offered in multiple configurations, an order of that size could cost over $2 billion.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the IATA AGM in Vancouver.
"Our plan is to have 64 aircraft by the end of 2010, which would be a doubling of our fleet since 2002," Hamid was quoted. At the end of this year, the airline's fleet will consist of 50 planes.
Egypt Air, which operates more than 400 flights a week to 94 destinations in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Australia, saw passenger traffic grow by 12 per cent last year, to 5.8 million.
The airline recently announced it will begin operating daily flights between Amman and Sharm El Sheikh as of October. Also, it said it has increased its flights between Amman and Cairo from seven to 12 weekly flights. It is worth mentioning that the Egypt and Jordan signed an MoU last October, increasing capacity to 1,800 weekly seats for each side in one direction without limitation on the number of flights.