Published: 12 November 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
I have been asking Ashraf why it is so difficult to reserve the flight. Most booking sites don’t turn up a result for the one-hour journey. Of those that do, Air Sinai 4D55 shows up with a greyed-out “unavailable” at the booking button.
If you search for Air Sinai online, there is no website. To book a seat, you must personally visit the Air Sinai office in Tel Aviv or Cairo and pay in US currency.
As a millennial who is used to booking a flight to Melbourne on an iPhone a couple of hours before it leaves, I’m stunned not just by how little effort has been made to advertise this flight, but by the labyrinthine process of booking.
Most Israelis I ask assure me no such flight exists. And at $US365 ($504) for a one-way ticket, it’s not exactly budget-friendly. I get the impression this airline is trying its hardest not to sell tickets.
Which is why you’d be forgiven for believing the flight does not actually exist.
Air Sinai is what’s called a “paper airline”, meaning one with no real assets. It leases its planes, and they only “exist” on paper. Its origins reflect the crazy logic of Middle-East politics.
As part of the peace agreement Egypt signed with Israel in 1979, EgyptAir began a daily commercial service between the two countries. To avoid drawing too much attention to the fact it would be the first national carrier of an Arab nation to fly to Israel, Egypt set up Air Sinai.
Still today, the airline operates just the one route daily in each direction. While Israeli airlines have flown the route on and off, political shifts in the region mean Air Sinai is the last carrier of the torch.
And there’s real reason for the airline to continue to do so as it’s a requirement of the peace deal for daily commercial flights to continue. The politics become more confusing once you try to get on this flight. The Air Sinai office in Tel Aviv is in a building that houses the trade missions of France and several African nations. Inside, Egyptian government letterheads are strewn across the desks, Egyptian flags are hanging in offices and posters advertise scuba diving in the Red Sea. Such a big office for such a “secret” airline, I observe.
Before leaving Australia, I Skyped the airline to try to book over the phone because I was concerned the flight would fill before I arrived in Tel Aviv to book in person. But the person I spoke to told me not to worry as there are “always” seats.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that when I finally walk into the office and announce I want to book a one-way flight to Cairo, the receptionist turns to me and says, “Oh yes, that’s right, you wanted to fly on July 17?” I’m a little spooked. Surely mine is not the only inquiry the office has had since then.
Despite my bizarre reservation experience, the flight itself is fantastic. The queue at the Air Sinai desk is refreshingly small. There’s a Coptic priest with his dog in a carrier cage, an Afrikaans-speaking church tour group, and me. Three Israeli diplomats then cut in, flash official-looking papers and get their tickets ahead of me. It feels like I’m boarding a Soviet-era flight to West Berlin.
Our plane is a two-by-two Embraer 170, and the flight is about a quarter full. While the exterior is blank, with no airline markings, the headrests and flight attendants are branded EgyptAir.
Ironically, the captain avoids the Sinai Peninsula, which would be the more direct, yet unsafe, route and flies over the Mediterranean and down to Cairo. On board, I strike up conversation with a political analyst who’s on his way to Erbil in Iraq to work on a project with the Kurdish government, and we land about 50 minutes later.
From sipping a flat white on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard in the morning, to lunching on fresh falafels in the chaos of Cairo that afternoon, what started out as a short connection has turned into a mission well accomplished.
Photo: News Ltd
This article was originally published in The Australian
