Ships of the desert

For millennia the oasis represented precious water and shade, a life-saving waypoint for travellers trekking across the burning, hostile desert. But then came air travel, and the refuge became a playground, far from the madding crowd but just a short hop from big-city home and business.
Whisking the rich and the famous to the oasis resorts of Egypt ’s Western Desert is something that Cairo-based air taxi operator Alkan Air is very good at. “With our Super King Air 350 we can easily fly to and from oases like Siwa and Dakhla,” said general manager Awad Dargham. “These luxury hideaways aren’t for anyone looking for a cheap holiday – guests include people like movie star Robert de Niro. By car the journey takes up to 12 hours of hard driving. In the King Air we can take up to 10 people there in an hour’s flying time.”
Founded in 1996 as Egypt ’s first air-taxi company, Alkan Air operates a Hawker Beechcraft 850XP alongside the turboprop. “Overall, our activity divides 50/50 between business and high-level tourism, though the proportion varies with the time of year,” said Dargham. “At Easter, Christmas and New Year a lot of high-end tourists visit Egypt and rent an aircraft. We also have Egyptian clients who come to us on the big Muslim feasts of Eid al-Adha and Eid el-Fitr to fly with their families to places like Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, or further afield to Lebanon or Greece .”
The hot Egyptian summer brings work from well-off people who want quick A-to-B transport to their holiday destinations. “The cooler north coast, particularly the newly developed area around El Alamein 200km west of Alexandria , is increasingly popular,” said Dargham.

At other times of the year business travel can account for up to 65 per cent of the company’s flying time – though even then there’s a leisure dimension. “Some business people want a quick trip to see the antiquities of Abu Simbel while they are in Cairo ,” Dargham explained. “So we take them there, wait for three or four hours while they see the sights, then bring them back to Cairo or on to other destinations like Sharm or Luxor.”
Alkan Air’s top international destinations, served mainly by the Hawker Beechcraft 850XP with its 455kt top speed and range of 2,600 miles, are Tripoli in Libya , Lebanese capital Beirut and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia .
After a recession-induced dip last year, the company’s results are now returning to the healthy levels of 2007-08, according to Dargham. But he’s keen to develop other income streams and is looking first to the company’s maintenance capabilities.

“We set up a maintenance department here ten years ago to save some of the $60-70,000 it cost us every time we took an aircraft to Hawker Beechcraft in Switzerland for scheduled work,” he recalled. “At the turn of this year we received Egyptian CAA approval to offer maintenance services to third parties and now we’re pushing ahead to find clients that we can serve here in our hangar.”
The company is a certificated Hawker Beechcraft service centre and can offer a full range of services up to and including C-checks.

The company dipped its toe in the water by providing SMART Aviation, its government-owned competitor at Cairo International, with hangar space and maintenance tooling. Now it’s in sight of its first contract for work on third-party aircraft. “We are in negotiations with a couple of Egyptian Government King Air operators,” said Dargham. “They currently send the aircraft to Dusseldorf in Germany for engine work at a cost several times what we would charge.”
Alkan Air is also aiming to return to a market that it vacated last year. “We used to run a King Air B200 equipped as an ambulance but we returned it to the Egyptian Ministry of Health, which co-owned it with us,” said Dargham. “Now we’re planning to relaunch the service using a turboprop.”
Dargham doesn’t rule out new jets for other applications, however. “We have an Embraer Phenom 100 under deposit for delivery in March or April next year,” he said. “And we’re looking to acquire a long-range aircraft in a couple of years’ time.