The head of the Egyptian Company for Airports, Ahmed Mansour, announced that the capacity of the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport has risen from 7.5 million passengers to 10 million passengers annually.
In an interview with CBC channel, he said that the number of tourists has witnessed a significant increase in the recent period and is expected to increase even further after COP27 climate summit.
“We worked to keep pace with the event by developing Egyptian airports. Sharm el-Sheikh airport had a certain capacity, and numbers will increase during the conference and after it,” he explained.
“We worked on developing the runways to receive planes of larger sizes and shapes, and we developed all of Sharm el-Sheikh’s runways with simultaneous timing,” he added.
“The passengers at the airport did not feel that we are developing and closing some runways and opening others, and we have also increased the capacity of aircraft taxiing by 30 percent to receive tourists and visitors to Egypt.”
The company is responsible for all of Egypt’s airports except for Cairo Airport, he added, and when it was announced that Egypt would host COP27, the political leadership directed the Ministry of Civil Aviation to keep pace with the event.
In conjunction with the launch of the United Nations Climate Summit COP27, the hotel tourist occupancy rate in Sharm el-Sheikh has reached 100 percent, according to local media.
South Sinai Governor, Khaled Fouda, said that Sharm el-Sheikh Airport received 7,500 participants of various nationalities on Friday, and 7,500 participants on Saturday, bringing the total number of visitors to Sharm el-Sheikh over the course of only two days to 15,000.
A vital summit
The Climate Summit is scheduled to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh from November 6-18, with the participation of world leaders, and about 40,000 participants from 197 countries, to discuss the repercussions of climate change, and the role of each country to confront and address this problem.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that Egypt hosts more than 45,000 registered participants in COP27 representing parties, the United Nations, regional organizations, companies, the scientific community, indigenous and local communities and civil society to promote and accelerate the implementation and follow-up of climate action.
