Since its spring time, it is now time to use my air miles and visit my aunts in Egypt. Any direct flight to Beirut is about 1 hour of flying.
For my return trip Cairo - Beirut on Middle East Airlines - MEA click here:
https://flight-report.com/en/report/31325/Middle-East-Airlines-ME305-Cairo-CAI-Beirut-BEY
The most exciting part of my flight this time, is that I will be able to visit the Cedar Lounge at Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport which was opened in 2005, and renovated in February 2018.
Well, here we are.. I arrived at the airport at 5:30 a.m three hours prior to my flight departure. Check-in and immigration counters & passport controls, we extremely efficient. I finished the whole process in less than 15 minutes and found myself heading to the Cedar Lounge
The Cedar Lounge entrance:
The Cedar lounge is very large, and has a generous seating capacity. It occupies the upper part of the airport terminal,
The food at the lounge was extremely tasty, freshly made, and prepared according to the Lebanese cuisine standards. There were several choices from oriental breakfast to sandwiches and lite bites. There were several coffee and espresso machines, and a special dedicated bar for alcoholic beverages where the finest wines were served. Also there were several refrigerators for soft drinks.
The view from the lounge gives a pleasant view over the tarmac
Well, it was time for boarding… Our plane will be MEA's newest A320-232 (T7-MRF) which was delivered in March 2016. Boarding was efficient and by queues according to your seat
The cabin is neat and nice and has personal IFE for each passenger:
Pushback and take-off were on-time and the our one hour journey to Cairo started.
Take-off was bumpy, yet it gave us astonishing views for the clouds layers:
30 Minutes into the flight, a light healthy breakfast was served comprising of cheese cuts, yogurt, juice, coffee, and tea. The cabin crew were extremely friendly and smiley and provided passengers with coffee/tea refills (It is a one hour flight, don't expect more) :P
I spent most of the flight tracing the flight path on our inflight map displayed on personal IFE:
Soon we started our descent towards Cairo from the Egyptian north coastline:
The ancient city of Cairo:
Preparing for our crosswind landing…. Coooool :)
In fact despite, bumpy approach, touchdown was soft as we landing at Cairo 25 ahead of our schedule
Landing video
We parked at Cairo International Airport new terminal 2. The terminal is clean, stuff are efficient yet rude
Thank you so much for this report,
MEA is offering a very interesting service. This flight is quite short and being able to get a meal is a very good point.
A friendly crew is making it even better!
It's always great to have individual IFE on A320 or B737 or E190 since most airlines do not offer individual IFE in this type of aircraft.
IFE and a full meal on a 1 hour flight--it doesn't get much better than that in Y. Nice short-haul product by MEA. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for a great report on relatively short flight with very nice service. MEA has a very simple but beautiful livery and the airline symbol on winglet looks simply fantastic! The cabin also looks great.
Interesting flight report
Could you scan all the boardingpass, delete the barcode and private details and send me the picture?. i like collecting boardingpasses of diferent airlines without private details
if you decide my email adress is
[email protected]