The OnBoard Courier for Egypt

After it come Hurghada (HRG) with 87 destinations and about 83.3 departures a day, Sharm el Sheikh (SSH) with 62 destinations and about 60.9 departures a day, Alexandria (HBE) with 14 destinations and about 22.1 departures a day, Giza (SPX) with 14 destinations and about 11.9 departures a day and Luxor (LXR) with 5 destinations and about 10 departures a day. Those are the alternates. When the primary gateway is shut by weather, a strike or a curfew, they are what a courier is rebooked through. Between them the 7 airports in Egypt that publish departures schedule about 504 movements a day and reach 298 separate destinations, counting each city once per airport.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From CAI alone, 1,572 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 105 served nonstop. A gateway that multiplies its own reach that far with one change is a hub in the useful sense: almost anywhere is two boarding passes away. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

9 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 8 domestic destinations. That matters on a hand carry because it decides whether the last leg can be flown or has to be driven. A consignee outside the gateway city is then a connecting flight, not a four hour drive.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to Saudi Arabia, about 129.9 flights a day, the United Arab Emirates, about 35.5 flights a day, Germany, about 35.4 flights a day, Russia, about 30.6 flights a day and Italy, about 29.1 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from Egypt without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from Egypt to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

77 airlines fly out of Egypt in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to EgyptAir on 102 routes, Air Cairo on 70 routes, Nesma Airlines on 52 routes, easyJet on 35 routes and Nile Air on 30 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of CAI in this data runs to Chicago, United States (ORD), 9,875 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

From the Emirates, Egypt is reached nonstop. The network file records 6 such pairs: Dubai to Cairo (CAI), about 9.9 a day on EgyptAir and Emirates, Dubai to Alexandria (HBE), about 3.3 a day on flydubai, Dubai to Giza (SPX), about 1.6 a day on flydubai, Abu Dhabi to Alexandria (ALY), about 1.4 a day on Air Arabia Abu Dhabi and Sharjah to Sohag (HMB), about 1.1 a day on Air Arabia. More than one nonstop pair means more than one chance to travel on the day the consignment is ready, which is worth more on this kind of work than any single fast flight.

The carriers on those sectors are EgyptAir, Emirates, flydubai, Air Arabia Abu Dhabi and Air Arabia. With this many, the choice is an operational one rather than a preference: cabin baggage allowances, what each airline accepts as a carry on item and how it treats an extra seat purchase all differ, and those three things decide whether the consignment travels in the cabin at all.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 2 city pages, 2 standalone city pages, 7 Atlas entries, 1 airport page and 3 lane pages for Egypt, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. The coverage here is thin, and saying so is more useful than padding it. What exists is accurate; what is missing is missing because nothing on this desk has been written about it yet.