Malta’s national carrier, Air Malta, has announced the return of direct flights from Malta to Cairo after a 12-year halt. Spanish airline Iberia had also announced its intention to operate 4 weekly direct flights between the Spanish capital, Madrid, and Cairo starting March 2, 2020.
For her part, Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, Minister of Tourism, welcomed the resumption of flights to Egypt by a large number of international airlines, which confirms that the promotional campaign for Egypt is yielding positive results and is an indicator of the success Egyptian tourism is achieving and its return to the global tourism map. She added that operating these flights helps increase inbound tourist traffic to Egypt, especially from new markets, and stressed the ministry’s interest in opening new and promising markets, which represents new energy for Egyptian tourism.
It is worth noting that the Ministry of Tourism has settled all outstanding dues under the previous aviation incentive program, which had been a problem in past years. Since January 2018, the ministry has worked on completing payment of these dues and drafting a new aviation incentive program, which was launched last November in cooperation with the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The new program takes into account reducing and simplifying the administrative procedures and paperwork required by the incentive process, and sets specific dates for applying and disbursing dues, ensuring a clear, flexible and easy disbursement process.
The new incentive program is based on not distinguishing between charter and scheduled flights, in addition to giving preference to governorates whose inbound tourism rates have been affected recently, to drive more traffic to them. The new incentive program also gives additional incremental incentives every 6 months on incentivized flights, which will help attract tourists from new markets by operating newly introduced air routes and boost traffic at regional airports and various tourist areas.
