The Problem with Giza's New Sphinx International Airport
If you're a little foggy on why the brand new shiny airport that was built much closer to Egypt's two largest tourist attractions - the Pyramids of Giza and the new Grand Egyptian Museum - is barely being used several years after it opened and became fully operational, well there's quite a dense reason behind the mystery. Ok, enough with the puns... it has a lot to do with fog... dense fog.
Sphinx International Airport was built with the intention of relieving a lot of the pressure on the Egyptian capital's main aviation hub, Cairo International Airport (CAI), which lies on the far eastern side of the sprawling mega-metropolis of Greater Cairo. In contrast, Sphinx International Airport (SPX) was intentionally situated on the far western edge of that mega-metropolis in western Giza, even further out than where the Pyramids and Grand Egyptian Museum lie. While the hope was that a second commercial airport for the city would serve a significant portion of Egypt's tourism-related arrivals and departures and leave the older and larger CAI to continue serving residents of the city's eastern suburbs, business travelers, and government employees and diplomats, the reality several years after SPX's opening is that few airlines are utilizing this brand new airport and few international visitors even know it exists.
The empty land that was designated for SPX sits just north of the Greater Cairo/Giza's western-most suburbs, including the very affluent Six October City and Sheikh Zayed City. Presumably full of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Egyptian international traveling residents themselves, the proximity of these suburbs to SPX deepens the mystery even further as to why this brand new airport is not buzzing with business.
However, what many of these area residents know from living long-term at the nexus between the sprawling mesh of urban and suburban metropolis that is Greater Cairo to the east and south, the lush fertile Nile Delta region to the northeast, and the barren arid Sahara Desert immediately to the west is that mix of terrains and climates in this tripartite border region makes for some unusual weather phenomena from time to time that can be annoyingly unpredictable and which can wreak havoc on traffic, cause anyone stuck in said traffic to be insanely late (even by Egyptian time!) to wherever they may be going and need to arrive on time - an airport, for example.
On a regular basis, dense fogs tend to roll across the area and linger, sometimes for 30 minutes and sometimes for three hours. There's no way to predict when these fog blankets will appear, and when they do there's no way to tell how long they will last. But when they do appear, the road authority usually has to shut down the main highway traversing through this area - the Alexandria Desert Road. And guess which road happens to be the main thoroughfare for anyone going to or coming from Sphinx International Airport... You guessed it - the same Alexandria Desert Road that frequently gets shut down for impassability due to fog.
For those who don't mind taking the risk that they might get randomly stuck waiting at the airport exit after arrival waiting for the road to reopen, SPX can indeed offer a closer and more convenient option for those staying in western Giza or one of its suburbs. But for those wanting to both arrive and depart out of the new airport... well, you're rolling the dice on staying in the area even longer than you planned if you miss your flight due to a multi-hour road closure on the way to the airport.
Perhaps in the future the government of Egypt will decide to build an additional highway or few to the east of SPX and create more access points for the airport beyond the current current single point of access via the Alexandria Desert Road. After all, there are multiple entrances to and exits from CAI from more than one cardinal direction. But whether this airport access Plan B is already in the works or future wishful thinking is only something that the gods can know. But if you want to help, say a little prayer to Horus, god of the sky, that he blesses this new airport with better luck moving forward.
