Back in February 2020, a new website was launched for the little known airline Air Sinai. The airline flies a single route secretive passenger service between the cities of Cairo in Egypt and Tel Aviv in Israel. And this was the first time that Air Sinai had officially appeared on the internet. For those that are familiar with Air Sinai this was huge news!
What was interesting about this, is that it was registered to a company in the UK, that makes it very clear that it isn't working for or affiliated with Air Sinai itself, they act as a travel agent only. Up until now it was almost impossible to book a flight with them, without being transferred endlessly between travel agents.
So why is this airline so secretive, and why was it so difficult to book a flight with them before now?
For the answer to this question we have to go back to the late 70's. In 1979 Egypt and Israel signed a peace deal brokered by the United States. This agreement ended the state of war that had existed between Egypt and Israel since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, returned the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt, which they had lost to Israel in the Six-Day-War in 1967, and normalized relations between the two countries.
But Egypt wasn't getting all of this for free, in return Egypt among other things officially recognized Israel as a country, but also had to maintain civilian transportation links to Israel. Now normally something like this wouldn't be a big deal of course, but Egypt's history with Israel and the complicated political and interfaith relations of the region, made this quite a sensitive issue.
Egypt got around this quite cleverly, nobody had said that Egypt couldn't run the air service in secret, and this is exactly what they did! Egypt could face boycotting and would upset their Arab neighbors if it publicly disclosed the opening of air routes between the two countries. So in 1982 Air Sinai was quietly set up, and provided transport on a single route, back and forth between Egypt and Israel.
The airline used planes owned by Egypt Air, the state owned flag carrier of Egypt, and the company quickly became known as a ghost airline, to those who were even aware it existed. As you can imagine, this didn't make it easy to book a seat on one of their flights.
If you've ever complained about the price of plane tickets or bad customer service, just imagine what Air Sinai passengers in the 80's and 90's had to go through to book a flight.
It would often take weeks of communicating back and forth with contacts within Egypt Air, before being told to go to a travel agent, where you'd have to pay ridiculously high prices in cash, carried in unmarked envelopes.
Air Sinai flights were not displayed on information boards at Cairo's airport, and travelers had to talk to airport staff in person for directions to their plane. These usually led them to a street corner, where a bus would pick them up and take them directly to an unmarked airplane. And for decades this is how Air Sinai operated.
You're probably wondering by now, why would anyone put up with this?
For the few people that need to travel between Egypt and Israel, this was the fastest option. The only other alternative was a long layover somewhere else, like in Cyprus or Jordan, and this made it worth for these people to go through the trouble and extra expense of traveling with Air Sinai.
In 2002 Air Sinai stopped being recognized as its own entity and became a paper airline. This means that they didn't own any assets such as planes and staff. Instead everything was leased from the parent company Egypt Air.
In reality Egypt Air was the owner of Air Sinai, but legally the airline was on its own, and Egypt Air pretended that there was absolutely no connection between the two companies.
When the internet was introduced it became a slightly easier to book tickets with the airline. People began sharing an email address and phone numbers for the company online, although often there would be no response, the staff didn't speak English, or people would simply be redirected somewhere else. However some people were able to book seats this way, so it was either hit or miss. Those that were successful though still had to go through a travel agency and pay in cash.
Even until just a few years ago, it would take several trips to multiple travel agencies, just to get a ticket! And even if they were able to book the flight, it would take quite a while to reserve the seats, and multiple phone calls would have to be made. At least at that point they accepted credit and debit cards.
For a long time, Air Sinai flights were operated by white unmarked Boeing 737 aircraft.
More recently these planes have been replaced by Embraer E-170 and Airbus A220 aircraft, which air painted in Egypt Air's livery, although all names and logos have been removed.
Once inside the plane, everything is branded with the Egypt Air name and logos, and the staff are dressed in Egypt Air uniforms. Passengers that got caught taking pictures or making a video were told to delete what they had filmed or photographed.
In 2014 Egypt Air began announcing flights on Cairo's information boards. But still no announcements were made, and instead of displaying Air Sinai's name, they used the airlines 4D identification code.
But now that the website has been launched, which makes booking a ticket as easy as with any other airline, it might signal that Egypt might be willing to publicly acknowledge the existence of the airline at some point in the future, and treat it like a normal airline.
Unfortunately round trip tickets for the route, which lasts for a total flight time of 2 hours and 45 minutes, costs €549/$665! So I don't think I'll be flying the airline anytime soon.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article!