Egypt Air

Egypt Air has officially announced that it is seriously examining the possibility of launching new daily flights to Toronto, Chicago and Washington DC from Summer 2011 as the carrier takes delivery of its last batch 2 new Boeing 777-300ERs by that time. Out of these 3 destinations, only 2 will be launched but the carrier insists that it will use their new B 77Ws to launch these services. It has also revealed on the GDS that effective Jan 1st 2011, capacity on its flagship CAI-JFK route will be increased from a daily B 777-200ER to a daily B 777-300ER. By December 2010, MS will have 3 B 773ERs and will be using them exclusively on 6 weekly nonstop flights to Tokyo + daily JFK services. MS's B 77Ws seat 346 in a 2 class configuration i.e. 49 in business class and 297 in economy class.

Comments:

There is no logical way that MS can fill a B 77W operating to YYZ-Toronto on a year round daily basis as the market isn't big enough to support a service using such an aircraft type. The best aircraft suited for MS's CAI-YYZ services is their 268 seater Airbus A 330-200 which accommodates 24 in J class and 244 in Y class. Even for IAD and ORD, the B 77W is too big for both routes to operate on a daily basis even if UA code shares on these flights which it definitely shall. If it really wants to fly B 77Ws to USA apart from JFK, then the best option would be IAD versus ORD because filling a 49 seater J class cabin with UA feed would be far easier from the political capital city versus ORD. From IAD, MS can get decent amount of high yielding political and business traffic bound to CAI and via its hub to KRT, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, South Africa, KRT, Central Asia, TIP, ALG, TUN and AMM.