The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

Dog days at Cairo airport

Lucky, lucky reporter who filed this:
CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian sniffer dog charged with ensuring the security of an EgyptAir flight from Cairo to New York has answered a call of nature that cost the airline an estimated 10,000 dollars.

The flight had to be delayed for more than an hour when the unnamed animal did his business in a cabin filled with 179 passengers on Flight 985, a security source at Cairo international airport said Friday.

While checking the cabin for explosives and other dangerous materials and giving the all clear, the dog did what dogs do and produced something to be sniffed at.

The captain then ordered that the cabin be cleaned and disinfected, resulting in a delay of 65 minutes, the airport source said.

"Each hour a scheduled takeoff is delayed costs the company 10,000 dollars in supplementary fees and penalties," the source said.

The animal is now in the doghouse.
The weird thing is that I must take 8-10 flights from Cairo and other airports a year and have never seen a sniffer dog inside the plane when passengers were there. Is this only on flight to New York?

Anyway, my second favorite Cairo airport story -- the first one remains the time that Amr Moussa, the Sec-Gen of the Arab League, had his plane grounded because the League had not paid its ground services fee and his assistants had to come up with the cash for refueling among themselves.