Cairo International Airport, code CAI, is where almost every trip to Egypt begins. It is large, busy and slightly disorderly, and the hour between the aircraft door opening and your car pulling away is the part of the journey travellers ask about most. None of it is difficult. It is simply unfamiliar, and it happens when you are tired. What follows is the arrival in the order it actually occurs, and then the departure, which has its own rhythm and catches people out more often than the arrival does.

Check one thing on your ticket first. Cairo has a second commercial airport, Sphinx International, out to the west beyond Giza. Only a small number of flights use it, but if your booking says Sphinx rather than Cairo International, everything below about terminals and transfer times is different for you. Confirm the airport, then confirm the terminal.

Three terminals, and yours is not next door to the others

Cairo International has three passenger terminals. Terminal 1 is the oldest and handles mainly domestic flights and some regional carriers. Terminals 2 and 3 are the modern ones, and most international arrivals come through them. EgyptAir, the national carrier, operates from Terminal 3.

The three are separate buildings rather than wings of one hall, which matters more than it sounds. You cannot stroll between them in ten minutes with a suitcase behind you. A shuttle bus links some of the terminals and does not charge for the ride, but treat it as a convenience rather than a plan. It is not the thing to be relying on with forty minutes left before a connection.

Airlines get moved between terminals more often than you would expect, so a terminal number printed on a booking made eight months ago deserves a second look a day or two before you fly. Whoever is collecting you needs the same information, in writing.

What happens between the aircraft door and the exit

The sequence is fixed and it does not vary:

  1. Buy your visa, if you are getting one on arrival. The counters come before passport control, not after it.
  2. Passport control.
  3. Baggage reclaim.
  4. Customs, and then the arrivals hall.

That order is exactly why the visa counters catch people out. They sit before the queue you were expecting, off to one side, and they look like bank desks rather than officialdom because that is what they are. Walk past them without a visa and you will be sent back from the front of passport control to start again.

The visa is the one thing to settle before you leave home

Most visitors to Egypt need a tourist visa, and there are two usual ways to hold one.

Buying it on arrival

Before passport control there is a row of bank counters selling a visa sticker. You buy it, it goes into your passport, and the officer at the desk a few steps later stamps it. The fee is paid in cash, and US dollars are the currency to have ready in your hand luggage rather than in the bag you checked. Clean notes, and as close to the exact amount as you can manage.

Applying online before you travel

The e-visa is arranged over the internet in advance and it has become the more popular route. It costs you an evening at a laptop and it buys back the counter queue at the end of a long flight, which is a good trade when you land after midnight.

Eligibility is the part no travel guide can answer for you, and any page telling you that every traveller can simply turn up and buy a visa is wrong. Egypt publishes lists of which nationalities may buy on arrival, which must apply in advance online or through an embassy, and which need approval before boarding. Those lists are revised. Check yours against current official guidance for your own passport, then check it again a few weeks before departure rather than trusting something you read a year ago. Our page on Egypt visa requirements works through the routes in more detail.

Getting from the airport into Cairo

Central Cairo and the Giza side of the river are both roughly 30 to 45 minutes from the terminals, and that figure moves with the traffic far more than with the distance. There is no metro station at the terminals, so every option below is a road one.

Option How it works Watch for
Pre-booked transfer A driver waits past customs holding a sign with your name, at a price fixed before you flew, and drives you straight to the hotel Give the booking your flight number so the driver can track a delay
Official airport taxi White, licensed cars from the rank outside the terminal building Agree the fare before the boot is opened, never after you arrive
Uber or Careem App booking, usually cheaper than a taxi, no negotiating, and the trip leaves a record You need data or airport wifi to order, and you walk to the signposted pickup point
Public bus Cheapest by a wide margin Luggage, routes and timing make it a poor choice for a first arrival

The easiest of the four, particularly after a long flight, is the one arranged before you left home. The driver is already outside customs, the price was agreed weeks ago, and there is no conversation to have about any of it. Airport transfers and arrival assistance sit inside our Egypt tour packages for that reason.

The people who approach you inside the terminal

Between the customs door and the exit you will be offered transport several times, sometimes before you have finished walking through. These are middlemen. They are not dangerous and this is not a scam in the dramatic sense, but they cost noticeably more than the licensed rank and a great deal more than the apps, and a polite refusal now is easier than the argument about the fare at the other end. Keep walking to the rank or to the app pickup point. If you are still weighing up how safe Egypt really is, this is the honest shape of it at the airport: the risk is to your wallet and your patience, not to you.

Money, a SIM card, and your first hour

The arrivals area has cash machines and exchange desks, so getting your first Egyptian pounds is straightforward. Change only what you need for the first day or two, because airport rates are never the best rates and the city will do better. Carrying some dollars or euros in cash alongside is sensible. They are accepted in more places than you would think, and they are your fallback if a machine refuses your card at eleven at night.

Have small notes on you from the start. Tipping is woven into daily life in Egypt, and the man who carries your bag to the room is the first of many small moments where a large note is no use to anyone. Reading about tipping in Egypt before you go removes most of the awkwardness. Cards work in hotels and better restaurants, while cash covers taxis, tips, markets and a great deal else, including monument entrance fees, which are priced in Egyptian pounds.

Counters for Vodafone, Orange and Etisalat sit in the same part of the hall and sell local SIM cards with data. Have your passport out, because the SIM is registered against it. A local number is worth more than it sounds: ride-hailing, maps and messaging your driver all depend on having data that works outside the hotel wifi.

Two things belong in writing before you land, on paper as well as on a phone that may have no signal yet. The address and telephone number of your hotel, ideally in Arabic as well as English. And the contact details of whoever is meeting you.

Connecting on to Luxor, Aswan or the Red Sea

Cairo is the country's connecting hub, and most domestic flights in Egypt start here. If your trip continues to Luxor, Aswan or the coast, it will almost certainly be on a domestic sector out of this airport. Those flights are short and comfortable, and they work best booked as part of the same itinerary as everything on the ground, so that a delayed arrival becomes somebody else's problem to solve rather than yours at a counter.

Domestic sectors inside Egypt, Cairo to Luxor and the like, are ours to arrange along with the ground programme. Your international flight is yours to book, and there is no advantage in it being otherwise.

If a connection falls on the same day you land, confirm the departure terminal and the timings in advance, and be honest with yourself about the margin. A long-haul arrival followed by a same-day domestic departure from a different terminal is the most common way a first day in Egypt goes wrong. A night in Cairo before flying south spends a day of the itinerary and saves the trip a great deal of stress, which is worth weighing when you decide how long to spend.

Meeting your driver

This is the moment that generates the most anxiety, because it arrives when you are tired, in a hall full of movement, without local currency and probably without working data. It is also the moment most easily solved in advance.

Before you fly, have four things settled: the driver's name and vehicle registration in writing, a telephone number for the company, the terminal you are landing in, and an agreed meeting point. If you cannot find the driver, send a message rather than making a call. Messaging works over wifi, it survives a bad line, and it gives both sides something to read back. Our number for that is +201032295513.

If nothing was arranged, do not accept an offer made to you in the hall. Walk out to the licensed rank, or order a car in the app and go to the signposted pickup point. It is cheaper, the trip is recorded, and there is nothing to negotiate.

Flying out: three hours, and four separate queues

Departure is the half of this that surprises people, because the airport starts checking you before you are inside the building.

  1. Security at the terminal entrance, with your bags scanned before you have checked in.
  2. Check-in.
  3. Passport control.
  4. Security again at the boarding gate.

Each of the four can have a queue, and they are not coordinated with one another. Three hours before an international departure is the sensible target, and it is a target for arriving at the terminal, not for leaving the hotel. Allow more margin than you would at an airport you know well, then add the city traffic, which is unpredictable by the hour and can turn a 40 minute run into 90.

Keep your passport and boarding pass somewhere you can reach one-handed for the whole process, because you will show them four times. Before you leave the hotel, go through your hand luggage for anything that will start a conversation at a scanner. The souvenir you were so pleased with in the bazaar is the usual culprit.

Duty free and your last Egyptian pounds

Spend or change your Egyptian money before you pass the controls, because the options on the far side are worse. Coins are a separate matter. No exchange desk anywhere will take Egyptian coins back, so treat them as tips or as souvenirs from the moment they reach your pocket.

Past security there is duty free and a run of shops, useful for perfume, dates, local sweets and the last of your notes. Many of them take dollars and euros as well as pounds. Prices are airport prices, higher than the same thing in the city, so serious souvenir shopping belongs in the bazaars earlier in the trip rather than here at the end of it.

If you have a long wait

The airport has cafes, restaurants, shops, wifi and rest areas, and some terminals have paid lounges for anyone who wants a quieter connection. What it does not have is unlimited comfortable seating in the common areas, and the wifi may want you to register before it gives you anything. If you are facing a long layover or a very early arrival for a dawn flight, a downloaded book, a charged power bank and something to eat in your bag will do more for you than the plan to sort it out when you get there.

Once you are through and in the car, the trip starts properly. Most of the things to see in Cairo are twenty minutes from the city hotels, and the rest of what to expect on the ground is in our Egypt travel guide.