Hurghada-Zurich - Return Flight

El Andalous - Beautiful Flowers in December

The time in Egypt went by all too quickly. I’d barely arrived and I had to go.

Hurghada used to be a pleasant airport – it was safe enough (I thought) and it all worked well. Now, though, security procedures have tightened. Although I appreciate the need for this and am in agreement with it in principle, I hope that the procedures will improve in efficiency at some point.

People had been saying you need to arrive 3 hours in advance. I thought this was a bit daft, but Nicole was taking me to the airport and she had an appointment, so she was taking me the whole three hours in advance. This was fine as I’m happy enough to sit and have coffee and cake or even just to read, if need be. It’s no great hardship.

As it turned out, I needed the entire three hours. First of all, the car was stopped as we entered the airport grounds. Nicole’s driving license was checked, they opened the boot of the car, they asked which of us was the passenger. Needless to say, this meant there was a queue of cars to enter the airport while these checks were performed.

I was at the new terminal and was relieved that the people in front of me were also going to Zurich as I wasn’t actually too sure if I had the right terminal (there used to be only one so I didn’t used to have to think about this kind of thing). You wouldn’t know that tourism was at only 30% looking at the queues as you entered the airport. The queue to get in stretched as far as I could see and, when I got that far, it turned out that there were only three luggage scanners, which was why there was a huge bottleneck. Heaven knows what it will be like when tourism is back to 100%! 

Unlike in most European airports, all your luggage was scanned before you even checked in (in Europe, you check in and then only your hand luggage is scanned). It’s always been like this in Hurghada, as I recall, so I’m not sure why the queues were so long this time. Anyway, that took me an entire hour. To be fair, I should point out that passport control on arrival in the US often takes an hour, too.

At least it meant that the check-in queues were non-existent. I checked in and then joined the queue for passport control. This wasn’t so bad. One confused guy tried twice to get through without having checked in and he was turned away twice, so the procedures were working.

I think – although I lost the plot a bit – passport control was then followed by a queue to check again that you’d had your passport stamped. Then you had to join another queue to scan your hand luggage, again. This was more chaotic. A German yelled out (in German) that one of the queues was for women only and it would go faster if people weren’t in the wrong queue. Luckily I can understand German, so I moved queues appropriately. I tried taking out my laptop, but a woman (again, in German) told me it wasn’t necessary.

By this time, the full three hours had passed. My flight was due to take off in 15 minutes, but they still weren’t boarding, so I nipped to a café and had a quick cup of coffee and a cake as I was parched after all that waiting and associated stress.

They checked passports again as you boarded and then one guy in front of me was patted down and had his hand luggage thoroughly searched with a torch as he entered the plane. A German woman complained very loudly about yet another check and how ridiculous she felt it was.

To my surprise I ended up sitting next to the guy who had his luggage searched again and it turned out that he was travelling with his twin (sitting next to him). Or maybe it was vice versa. Maybe I was actually sitting next to the twin and not him. I'm really not sure!

After that it was all plain sailing - or smooth flying is maybe a better expression - I treated myself to a wine (not included in the flight) and finally got to read my book. Finally, I was on my way back to Zurich.