Ominous Signs on the Jordanian Horizon

This is a subject I did not pay a lot attention to on the assumption that eventually things will be straightened out. But now one story after the other make me more and more nervous about the future of the Jordanian King.

King Abdallah II of Jordan. The King rules one of the thorniest places in the world where one political mistake could doom the kingdom and the whole region. King Abdallah inherited his throne from his father the late King Hussein who was one of the shrewdest politicians in the world. The throne was destined for Price Hassan (Abdallah's uncle) but palace intrigue and perhaps US interference resulted in a King Hussein changing his opinion days before his certain death in circumstances that are yet to be fully told.

It all started earlier this year. King Abdallah invited executive from a major US company to his palace in Amman. Those executives described to me later that the King offered to them land, no taxes, and all kinds of special treatment in exchange for that major US company setting any shop in Jordan. After meeting with the King, the visiting executives met privately with some of the King advisors who gave an entrirely different image. They described a recent royal visit to the US in which the King gambled and lost his private jet that he inherited from his father late King Hussein. A royal Jordanian airplane was scrambled to ferry the king back to Jordan and the event was portrayed in Jordan as royal humbleness to go back on a regular scheduled flight. They advisors also spoke of Queen Rania disenchantment with the King and spending most of her time outside the royal palace away from King Abdallah. Friends also told me that the king is alcoholic and he abhors the tribal leaders that his father used to pay homage to and that in the advisors’ opinion, is destabilizing the vital kingdom.

That was one story. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it at the time. I thought maybe these were sour advisors or maybe the story is exaggerated.

Queen Rania I am told is so dispproving of the King's behavior to the extent she spends most of her time travelling around the world.

But soon after came the 2nd story from Jordan. The King while on a visit to the US, floated the idea of establishing a movie academy on the red sea that will serve all of the Middle East. The King wanted it to be a joint project involving Israelis, Jordanians, and the rest of the Arab world. The King asked Steve Spielberg to advise him on the project. Steve recommended University of Southern California to operate the center, which is now supposed to start in 2008. Steve selected USC of course because he is on its board of trustees. Steve didn’t even attend the dedication ceremony. One Israeli prospective student spoke to the press about the need for such a center that will help bring peace in the Middle East (?!) and that there is need for such a center because there is no movie industry to speak of in the Middle East (?!).

A news article in the Jerusalem Post about the new Jordanian Cinema center. There are several alamrming signs: (1) Steve Spielberg didn't even bother attending the cermonies even though the idea is his brainchild. (2) This whole business that the Middle East needs a cinema academy jointly with Israel is honestly funny. The Middle East has a cinema tradition that pre-dates the creation of Israel and Egypt produces more movies than most European nations including the UK -- not to speak of Israel. This whole project has more show business to it than real thinking. I am not against creating joint institutes with Israel or anybody but you have to calculate what is in it for you.

Then, came the latest straw. Jordan nominated a prince Zaid (when I heard of it I said who is that?) to be a UN secretary general. First of all, this was my first time to hear the name of Jordan’s nominee. No doubt the guy lacked the necessary international credentials. Second, his name was floated in the last minute without any preparation. These nominations consume the good part of at least a year to do the proper lobbying and test the waters. Some how, the King thought that he can just float a name of a prince and that would be enough. Then, when as expected the nomination didn’t work, the King turned to Qatar and blamed her for the debacle. The reason of course is that Qatar is richer and more mature in its foreign relations compared to Jordan under the King. The Qatari didn’t even bother to respond. Give me a break, if the nominee was Prince Hassan, maybe I could have understood but Zaid who?

Jordan withdrew its Ambassador to Qatar because Doha did not support the Jordanian nominee for the UN secretary general post. Out of the 15 security council members, the Jordanian nominee got no votes. Jordan FM called Arab capitals asking for support of its nominee. As always, Arab capital promised "Kol Khair" or "All will be well", a code word for "get lost." Jordan --living in its own surreal world -- thought that is enough to gain support. The Jordanian king thought that is his silver bullet to raise his stature in the world. The result: a diplomatic fiasco of the first grade for a King who is living in his own world.

Finally in October, an article in the Los Angeles Times compared the King to the deposed Shah of Iran. This is now getting to be risky business. It is the responsibility of Arab leaders to help the Jordanian King mature.

The Last Straw: An article in the LA Times comparing King Abdallah behavior to the Shah of Iran. LA Times is strongly tied to the US democratic party and the Brookings Institute. This means that some in the US establishment are getting worried about the fate of the Jordanian King and his vital kingdom. Those some in Washington wanted to start sending a message of "watch out" to the king. He really does need to watch out.

Bashar Al-Assad with his son Hafez. This whole business of passing the throne to each leader's son because the son is cute, speaks English well, spent sometime in the United Kingdom, and looks modern is sort of getting on the crazy side. In a separate debacle, Bashar Assad described Arab leaders (he truly meant President Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, and King Abdallah of Jordan) as being half-men. Later Bashar discovered that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia can do him a good deal of harm or even let the US unleashed -- not a good option at all. Bashar's rashness is a sign of immaturity in a region that cannot take this kind of political trial and error. Later Bashar tried to pretend that he didn't really mean Saudi Arabia or Egypt and like any spoiled kid who recognized he has made a mistake, tried to say sorry without exactly saying it. The new crop of Arab leaders cannot change their diapers at the expense of their own nations, can they?

This whole business of passing the throne to immature kids is very risky. We see those risks every day. This period will go in history as the "era of kids."

An old Egyptian movie titled: "For A Bunch of Kids" The movie explains how lots of people should sacrifice to save the kids. However, I doubt the movie meant a whole nation though?

Egypt Air Flight 990

This time of the year brings shivers to me. For most, it is a reminder that winter is closing in. For me, it is a reminder of Egypt Air Flight 990.

Egypt Air Flight 990 Boeing 767 that crashed off the US Atlantic Coast while on a routine flight from JFK to Cairo. I still today remember the first time I set foot on the exact same plane back in 1997. That very second you enter the plane, you feel you are in Egypt. I remember the voice of the Captain reciting Quran during taxi, the music of Rafaat Al-Hagan filling the plane during embarkation (composer Ammar Al-Sharie picture top), and the Egyptian air attendants who to me looked as if they were coming alive from a Mahmoud Said portrait of Egyptian girls (Banat Bahari or "Coastal Girls", Center).

I flew on that same plane with that same crew several times. In fact, for few hours after the first news of the accident, I had relatives who thought I was on that exact flight that crashed off the US Atlantic Coast on October 31, 1999. I feel indebted to those who died on that flight to dig for the truth. This is my attempt to do exactly that.

It is not my intention here to recall the media frenzy and the accusations exchanged across the Atlantic. That was a foreshadow of the "war on terror" and a neglected sign of the yawning cultural gap that is becoming now a clash of civilizations. Neither will I get into technical discussions about the plane's thrust reversers or Al-Batouti's personal life. Instead, we go about doing some basic statistical analysis that we will find at the end to be quite revealing.

Data...Data...and More Data

The first step in this analysis is to collect airline accident data excluding those caused by terrorism. I found my destination in the website http://www.airdisaster.com

Accident rate of Egypt Air compared to other airlines in Africa and the Middle East. Only Air Zimbabwe and Royal Jordanian is worse than Egypt Air! Accident rate is the most fundamental metric that any airline should keep an eye on. This should come before service quality or even on-time arrival and departure.

The whole list of airline accident rate worldwide (source: http://www.airdisasters.com). It is clear there is a disparity among airlines. The typical excuse for Egypt Air and the Egyptian government is to explain the disparity by resource availability. That may explain the difference between the accident rate of US airlines and Egypt Air, but it fails to explain why Morocco, Kenya, or Ethiopia (the latter being among the poorest countries on Earth) are having lower accident rate than Egypt Air.

Relationship between Accident Rate and Country's GDP: To address the typical Egyptian government low income excuse, I plotted the airline accident rate vs. the country's GDP. The graph shows the following patterns:

(1) The United States leads the world in airline safety except for the new low cost carriers (Air Tran, which is the only one we have data for).

(2) The US is followed by Western Europe and Japan where there is quite a bit of variability but they are all share an accident rate that is less than 4 per million flights.

(3) Sliding toward lower income countries (to the left of the graph), we hit Gulf Arab airlines whose accident rate is comparable to the best in the world.

(4) Moving more to the left, we start to hit lower income countries where there is some trend of increasing average accident rate with declining income. However, more than 80% of all low-income countries have an accident rate that is lower than 5. Only outliners such as Egypt Air have a higher accident rate.

Therefore, the Egyptian government low-income excuse account for only an accident rte of 5. The additional 3 accidents per million flights that Egypt Air has cannot be explained by low income or unavailable resources. There is something else and as we will discover later it is mostly neglect and incompetence.

Number of accidents by itself is not a good indication. Simply if one airlines has an accident every other flight, its safety record is much worse than another which has an accident every 2 million flights. Therefore, the criterion to look for is the accident rate defined as number of accidents (excluding those caused by terrorism) every million flights.

The definition of accident is not very straightforward. Some accidents cause hundreds of fatalities, while other are minor upsets. It turns out that there is a specific definition agreed upon in which accidents are given a rating based on their severity. Accidents leading to any fatalities as a direct cause of the accident are given a rating of 1, while minor ones are given rating that is less than 1 and that is dependent on the level of accident severity.

The accident rate is the division of number of accidents and the number of opportunities to have an accident. An airline is good if it has very low accident rate -- meaning in all given opportunities to have an accident, its number of accidents is low. The opportunities here are measured by number of flights (defined as one take-off and one landing). Number of flights may not be the best indication of number of opportunities. Some may argue that during long flights, an airline has more opportunities than in a 30 minute one. Therefore, one should divide the number of accidents by flight hours (rather than number of flights) to get the true accident rate. This may be the case. However, I couldn't find data on number of flight hours. Besides, my pilot friends tell me that most of the risk during a flight is during take-off and landing. In long trans-continental flights, the risk during cruising is minimal. Therefore, I will consider the accident rate definition as is to be adequate.

Airplanes Accident Rate Data: Most airplanes in the world have great safety track record. This is most likely explained by the significant entry barrier to become an airplane manufacturer and the tough safety regulations and oversight in the manufacturing countries. Compare that to the relatively smaller entry barrier to become an airline. Any government in the world can create its own airline.

Not Exactly the Bottom of the Barrel, But Close

After collecting all the data, we turn next to analyzing the data.

Let us first look at the histogram of accident rates and airlines. The histogram shows that Egypt Air with accident rate = 8 is in the worst 10% of the population of all airlines around the world.

Historgram of World Airlines. Sad to say that Egypt Air ranks in the worst 10% of all world airlines.

Even in Africa and the Middle East, Egypt Air is worse than Saudi Arabia (which has twice the number of flights), Nigeria Air, Iran Air, Air Maroc, …. The only worse airlines are:

1- Royal Jordanian (8.82 accidents per million flights)
2- China Airlines (10.2)
3- Air Zimbabwe (12.5)
4- Aeroperu (16.7)
5- Cubana (24)

This is certainly not a distinguished place to be in. It is not exactly at the bottom of the barrel (as Cubana is) but is not really far away from that.

Is Egypt Air Just Unlucky? Is Boeing 767 Just A Bad Plane?

I asked myself, could it be that Egypt Air is just unlucky? Can it be that the Boeing 767 (the airplane equipment used for flight 990) is a bad model? Can it be that the Boeing 767 is just the culprit of airline accidents -- Egypt Air or otherwise?

Let us look at the accident rate of planes, again excluding hi-jacking:

With an accident rate of 0.46, the Boeing 767 has a solid track record for sure. It actually ranks # 3 among all airplanes, which makes it in the top 15%. Therefore, it cannot be that the Boeing 767 as a model is just a bad one. In fact, we could now ask the question: what is the probability that if an accident occurs on an Egypt Air Boeing 767, that the airline or the plane will be responsible…

We have some complication in answering this question. This is simply because the accident rate on Boeing 767 reflects all airlines using it whether good or bad, so the number we get there doesn’t represent the airplane responsibility itself, but the average of all users on that plane. Similarly, and to be fair, the accident rate on Egypt Air doesn’t mean that the airline itself is poor but can be that its airplanes themselves are poor.

To trace an answer to that question, we need to examine the accident rate of Egypt Air accident by accident and see the details of each one.

Here is the list of Egypt Air accidents:
2 January 1971; EgyptAir Comet4; Tripoli, Libya: The aircraft struck sand dunes four miles (6.4 km) from the runway during approach. All eight crew members and eight passengers were killed.

29 January 1973; EgyptAir Ilyushin 18; near Nicosia, Cyprus: The aircraft crashed into mountian during approach. All seven crew members and 30 passengers were killed.

25 December 1976; EgyptAir 707; Bangkok, Thailand: The aircraft crashed into a textile mill during approach. All nine crew members and 43 passengers were killed. Also killed were 20 people on the ground.

23 November 1985; Egyptair 737-200; Valletta, Malta: The aircraft was hijacked to Malta. After several hours of negotiations, Egyptian troops stormed the aircraft. During the ensuing battle, the hijackers threw several hand grenades. The aircraft was severely damaged by the explosions and fire. Two of the six crew members and 58 of the 90 passengers were killed.

10 June 1986; Air Sinai F27; Cairo, Egypt: Shortly before landing in reduced visibility, the crew reportedly attempted to go around. The crew lost control of the aircraft and crashed near the runway. All five crew members and 18 of the 21 passengers were killed.

31 October 1999; EgyptAir 767-300ER; Atlantic Ocean near Nantucket Island, MA: Radar and radio contact with the aircraft was lost shortly after the aircraft departed JFK Airport in New York on a flight to Cairo. The aircraft crashed into the ocean about 60 miles (96 km) south of Nantucket Island. The NTSB determined that the aircraft departed from controlled flight and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean as a result of flight control inputs by the first officer. All 14 crew members and 203 passengers were killed.

7 May 2002; EgyptAir 737-500; near Tunis, Tunisia: The aircraft crashed about 6 km (3.8 mi) from the airport after a flight from Cairo. The aircraft was reportedly making a second approach for landing when it crashed into high ground during a period of reduced visibility due to fog and sandstorms. Early reports indicate that seven of the eight crew members and at 11 of the 55 passengers were killed.

There is one more accident that belongs to Air Sinai which will be excluded in this analysis (even though Air Sinai is owned by Egypt Air). Also, there is an accident that resulted from hijacking and also will be discounted. That leaves 4 accidents since 1970.

Let us examine the airplanes themselves, they are 737-500, 767-300, Comet 4, and Illushyin 18. Let us take the planes one by one, starting with one accident that didn’t generate a lot of controversy; that is the B737 Egypt Air accident in Tunisia.

Egypt Air has a total of 0.75MM flights. The number of them on 737 is unknown but 737 is a popular model and it may represent the vast majority of the flights. To give Egypt Air all the benefit of the doubt, let us assume it represents 90% of the flights = 0.675 MM. Egypt Air had 1 accident on 0.675 MM flights representing an accident rate of 1.48 accidents per million flights.

However, Boeing 737 is used by a wide variety of airlines across the world. After all, it is the most popular airplane in the world. Of all the B737 users (whether good or bad operators), B737 had only 0.62 accident rate, or < ½ of the Egyptair accident rate. What is the probability that on the 0.675 MM flights that Egypt Air had of the 104.96 MM flight the world had on the B737 (with 0.62 accident rate) that Egypt Air will have 1 accident?

Historgram of World Aircrafts. With accidents rates of 0.62 per million flights, the Boeing 737 has one of the best safety records in the world.

That is an easier question to ask and we can answer that question as follows: Accidents happen usually following a Poisson distribution which Poisson discovered working for Napoleon to estimate the probability of a soldier being kicked by a horse! Assuming that accidents on a B737 follow the Poisson distribution with an accident rate = 0.62, what is the probability that over 0.675 MM flights, there will be less than 1 accident? That probability calculated according to the Poisson distribution ends up being 88-90%. What does that mean? That means that for all the universe of airlines using the Boeing 737 (out of which some are bad airlines and some are good airlines), approximately 90% of them will perform better than Egypt Air and have less than 1 accident given the same number of flights as Egypt Air had on the Boeing 737. If we realize that we inflated the number of flights that Egypt Air had on B737, it shows that if Egypt Air was an average operator of the B737, its probability of having an accident on its B737 fleet should be only 10-12%.

Can we do the same analysis for the Boeing 767 famous Egypt Air 990 accident?

Most likely not because we will need accurate usage number for Egypt Air of its B767 fleet (until Egypt Air decided not to use B767 again, which is honestly not a bad decision given that the B777 is more fuel efficient). But, we can make another conservative assumption similar to the one we made above? The Boeing 767 has an accident rate of 0.46. This is better than the B737 but actually typically the B767 is not as popular as the B737 and doesn’t have as many flights. It is also a more complex plane for long haul flights. Therefore, it is either operated only by larger airlines which may tend to be better users, or simply it didn’t have a lot of opportunities yet to fail…this is hard to tell.

But, let us assume conservatively again that the 1 accident that Egypt Air had on its B767 fleet occurred on the maximum possible number of flights that is comparable to the B737 and is equal to 0.675MM. This is a wildly conservative assumption but again we will make it to give Egypt Air all the possible benefit of the statistics. This translates to an accident rate of 1.48. The probability that an airline will have fewer accidents than Egypt Air is now 93%. This means that Egypt Air has to get the luck of 7% of the population to end up having the Egypt Air 990 accident.

Can Egypt Air Be Just Unlucky?

Things are not improving for Egypt Air so far. On average it is at the bottom 10% of all airlines. We thought initially that could be because it operates exceptionally bad planes. Therefore, we tried to look at specific accidents on Egypt air specific jets, which happened to be very popular by many airlines. In both cases (B737 and B767), Egypt Air had more accidents than 90% of the airlines operating those specific airplanes. It cannot be that Egypt Air is operating specifically bad airplanes. It has to be that Egypt Air is not a good operator and is truly at the bottom 10% of all operators.

But wait a second, it could be that Egypt Air just got unlucky on both the Boeing 767 and the Boeing 737 and got exceptionally bad planes in both cases. It could be that the model itself is good but the specific equipment was bad. It so happened that we can calculate the probability of that as well. Let us assume that all 3 B767 and all 57 B737 (number of accidents on both planes worldwide) were bad planes…had some form of malfunctioning and were not the operator problem but rather a Boeing problem. This is again a very conservative assumption, but one we will go along with for now to avoid distributing any blame on the airlines. There are 6000 B737 around the world, and there are more than 1000 B767 operating worldwide. If we assume all failures were related to Boeing. That means 57/6000 and 3/1000 bad airplanes. That is a failure rate of 0.95% and 0.3% respectively. This is for sure a low failure rate and corresponds to what is known in the industry as a 3 sigma process, so it is not necessarily a bad assumption that it is all Boeing’s fault, after all 3-sigma is not a bad industrial process. So, it is plausible that all B737 and B767 accidents were a manufacturer problem.

However, bak to Egypt Air. Egypt Air has to be so unlucky that when it took delivery of the B767, it took a bad plane and also when it took delivery of the B737 it still took a bad plane. The combined probability that Egypt Air took deliveries of bad planes in both cases is 0.3/100*0.95/100 = 28 per million. This cannot easily be accepted to be just lack of luck.

This probability is not zero, but it is very small. Egypt Air must be either incompetent with a probability of 90% or unlucky with a probability of 28 per million. I am trained in statistics and cannot reject the unlucky hypothesis. Someone may come years later and prove that Egypt Air was really unlucky and got bad deliveries in both cases. However, I am inclined to say for now it is just incompetence.

Now, it could be the Egypt Air 990 itself was not the result of incompetence and is truly something else: terrorism, deliberate act by the CIA or the Mossad to kill Egyptian officers onboard, suicidal tendancies of the pilot, ...whatever your flavor of the conspiracy theory is. I have no idea what exactly the true cause of Egypt Air 990 is. However what I am sure about now, is that Egypt Air is incompetent. Unfortunately, this is a fact that did not escape the US trial lawyers who used every bit of statistics to get Egypt Air to pay a hefty compensation package to the dead and injured. If Egypt Air had a better safety record, it could have been more difficult for those trial lawyers to extract the millions they did extract from the Egyptian treasury (finally all settlements were paid for by the Egyptian insurance company Misr Insurace which is owned by the Egyptian government, i.e., the Egyptian people paid for the neglect and incompetence).

It Is Not Only Egypt Air

The sad reality is that it is not only Egypt Air. The culture of neglect is so wide-spread in Egypt now that there is no respcet for rules, whether these rules are safety ones, engineering, or even the basic rule of law. Culture in Egypt is incredibly permissive of mistakes and errors. It doesn't take a genius to see all the train and road accidents that are becoming daily news in Egypt are really caused by a severe neglect of rules. There is also a complete lack of accountability and responsibility in many disciplines in the Egyptian society. I am sorry to shock you with this conclusion…however, as painful as it is, it still is reality, at least based on the scientific evidence.

Egypt Train Accidents Are Among the Highest in the World. After a series of them, President Mubarak told news reporters that the "accidents are because the train sector has been neglected for a long time and didn't receive proper investment levels. This is something that the government is working on now." Shortly after, the Egyptian minister of transportation declared in Al-Ahram that "investments are being directed now and that new locomotives are being bought and problem should be solved within 6 months." The minister also spoke of train electrification as the potential solution to the problem. This is the most wishful thinking in the world. Reasons are: (1) I cannot understand how new locomotives will avoid the head-on collisions that caused the recent series of accidents. (2) I checked with friends who manage sales and orders of Diesel locomotives in the American company that supplies most of Egypt's new locomotives. The shortest time to get a new locomotive is 1 year assuming all terms and conditions are agreed on. I don't understand how the minister will get his new locomotives! The saga continues and we should be waiting for another sad round of accidents!

I will not talk about road accidents and how disrespect for the rule of law is so widely spread on Egyptian streets (top and center pictures of road accidents in Egypt). Egyptian driving gets funny at least. I remember sitting next to a taxi driver who insisted that I put on the safety belt which was just a piece of cloth that didn't even buckle and lacked the safety coil so its only purpose would be to strangle me in case of an accident. The story didn't end there. The taxi driver broke almost every traffic rule I can remember including a red light, a stop sign, and a one-way street! I will not talk about that because it is becoming part of the Egyptian culture to have a street that more or less resembles a circus. But let me talk about something of far worse consequences: the oil industry. Egypt has a bad record of safety in an industry that is obssessed with safety. Picture above shows fire and explosion on an offshore platform off the Egyptian coast.

Egyptian Cruiser Al-Salam. Number of fatalities on Egyptian cruisers is more than those who died in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war! The captain of Al-Salam violated, upon instructions from ship's owner, international safety rules and proceeded with the planned trip despite clear adverse conditions. The cruise ship stories smelled high-level corruption all over them (the most recent ship disaster is owned by a billionaire who is connected to Zakria Azmi -- a chief advisor to president Mubarak and a major power broker in Egypt).

Ignoring the law is becoming a disease. On 4 Oct 2006, Reuters carried the following headline: RENNES, France, Oct 4 (Reuters) - A French court fined an Egyptian captain and his employer 500,000 euros ($634,400), a French record, on Wednesday for flushing out a cargo ship's tanks at sea and creating an oil slick. "The amount of the fine reflects the infraction and also the deplorable and ill-maintained state of the vessel," state prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux told Reuters.

Another Example of Egyptian "Fahlawah" which is connected to the culture of neglect and disrespect for rule of law: 11 Egyptian exchange students destined for English courses in Minnesota ended up with friends and families in New York for several weeks apparently seeking to find jobs. Not knowing of course that the US has tightened its control of foreign students attendance in its uinversities and of course being Egyptians have triggered all kinds of security alarms at the FBI. The result is a big embarassment, dashed hopes, and a denied visa for lots of law-respecting Egyptians.

The Solution: More Singing!

Let me take a little digression here. In the good old early days of Mubarak's presidency while hopes were high, there was a short song on Egyptian TV criticizing the culture of neglect. The song was named: "Maalish" (which translates to "It's OK") and the lyrics said: "For people who want to advance, they have to destroy Maalish." The song didn't last for long and obviously failed to achieve any of its objectives. The song was not bad, but it was a grim reminder that when you resort to songs, you really don't have anything else to offer. Unfortunately, things got worse because at least at that time we were willing to confront the difficult social and cultural problems. Now, we are just blaming the "chronic under-investment" in the transportation sector. Even if that is the case, mind you -- I beg your pardon, who is making these decisions? It is not the poor people whose fate led them to ride a 3rd class (terso as Egyptians say) Egyptian train?

Back to Reality: What Is Egypt Air Missing

Aside from the chronic culture of neglect in Egypt which the Egyptian government is unwilling to confornt its people with, there are things that could be done, particularly focusing on Egypt Air. The Egyptian government always accuses its critics that they don't offer solutions (as if the government does). Here are the elements of how Egypt Air at least could emerge:

1- Egypt Air should focus on the business of operating an airline. Operating a hospital as Egypt Air does has no synergy to operating an airline.

2- Egypt Air needs to establish regional and world partnerships. Did Egypt Air hear about code sharing? or joint-venturing? Instead of competing in limited markets, world airlines now code share (meaning the fly the same aircraft under the name of two or more airlines) so as to cut costs and improve profits.

3- Egypt Air needs to develop a regional alliance. A small fish like Egypt Air cannot negotiate opening up the US skies to more Egyptian flights. However, a regional alliance has multiple airports landings to offer to US airlines and can therefore gain access to more American cities.

4- Egypt Air should quickly bring its service to world standards. I feel sad when I see companies such as Aeroflot (the old quirky Russian airlines) now participating in global alliances such as the Sky Team alliance while no Arab airline is there. Egypt Air should take the lead on that. Leadership is not by history but is about present and future. Alliances like that give access to markets and publicity exposure, both are dearly needed by Egypt Air. However, these alliances won't let you in unless you meet certain standards. Egypt Air needs to move quickly in that direction.

5- Cairo Airport needs to privatized. I don't understand the logic behind privatizing railroads which are used by the vast majority of poor Egyptians and not even thinking about Cairo Airport used frequently by the elite who can afford air travel.

6- Egypt Air needs to look at its schedule and pricing. Egypt has a significant advantage because Cairo airport operates all night when all European airports don't. A flight heading to Africa or Asia can originate in Europe late at night, stop in Cairo at dawn, to continue trip early morning. Air travellers now book based mostly on price and availability of flights to suit their intended departure time. If you are smart about pricing and schedule, you can win big.

Alliances such as SkyTeam include the the likes of Dutch KLM, French Air France, American Delta, Mexican AeroMexico, and Russian Aeroflot! All in one partnership! When I fly on SkyTeam, I go from a Delta flight in the US to an Alitalia flight to cross the Atlantic, to an Air France one to land in Paris, and finally to a Korean flight going to Seoul...and it all feels like I am on the same airline. These alliances open their respective markets to each other and offer significant joint venture advantages. These alliances are constant reminders to me how Eastern Europeans have made strides in the past 20 years while we stoodstill. There is a famous joke about Egyptian presidents and their car drivers: Upon assuming presidency, Mubarak asked his driver about his two predecesors and how they instructed him to drive from home to office.Nasser always asked to give left signal and only turn left. Sadat instructed to give left signal and then turn right. The driver said, so what do you want to do Mr. President. Mubarak asked his driver to give a right signal, then a left signal, then park in the same place.

Final word, true leaders lead cultural change to the better. Failed leaders either sit idle or change the culture to the worse. I cannot say that President Mubarak created a culture of neglect. I can say though that he sat idle. His son can give us all the long lectures he wants about the fruits of free economy. I do believe in every word Mr. Gamal says and I don't sleep during his lecture as a European ambassador did recently, but without confronting Egypt's cultural issues, to me, they are not true leaders.