File photo: EgyptAir airplane (Photo: Reuters)
EgyptAir will operate four weekly direct flights from Cairo to Tel Aviv as of October for the first time since 1979, according to the Egyptian flagship carrier’s flight schedule.
Direct flights have been scheduled to take off from Cairo International Airport and arrive at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport on 3, 4, 5, and 7 October.
The ticket prices range from EGP 4,500 (around $285.7) to EGP 4,900 ($311) for one-way flights, which take around 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Although EgyptAir's schedule confirms earlier Israeli news reports about the flights between the Egyptian and the Israeli capitals, no official confirmation has been announced by the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry.
The Jerusalem-based online newspaper The Times Of Israel reported on Sunday that “once flights are re-launched by EgyptAir, they will be operated by the airline’s fully marked aircraft.”
Since the 1980s, the only flights between Israel and Cairo had been operated by Air Sinai, a subsidiary of EgyptAir, which operated flights in unmarked planes without the official flag.
The listing of direct flights between Cairo and Tel Aviv comes a few hours after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s meeting on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh.
The visit is the first by Bennett to Egypt as prime minister, as well as the first visit by an Israeli prime minister in general to Egypt, since 2011.
The two leaders discussed the latest developments concerning the peace process in the Middle East.
President El-Sisi asserted Egypt’s support for all efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East based on the two-state solution and international resolutions in a way that contributes to ensuring security and prosperity in the region.
According to the Israeli PM office’s statement on the meeting, Bennett stated that the Egyptian role “is important in the region” and that after four decades, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty has been the cornerstone of security and stability in the region.
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