SAIDE

SAIDE
A Savoia Marchetti SM.95 , here the Italian LATI
IATA code :	(without)
ICAO code :	(unknown)
Call sign :	(unknown)
Founding:	1947
Operation stopped:	1952
Seat:	Cairo
Home airport :	Cairo Almaza Airport Cairo International Airport
Fleet size:	9
Aims:	international
SAIDE ceased operations in 1952. The information in italics refer to the last status before the end of operation.

Saide (officially Services Aériens Internationaux d'Egypte or Saide ) was an Egyptian airline with headquarters in Cairo .

history

SAIDE was founded in 1947. The owners were 55% Egyptian and 45% Italian investors, which consisted of the Fiat conglomerate with its subsidiary Fiat Aviazione . Misr Bank was the largest among local investors.

In 1948 three brand new three-engine Fiat G.212CPs from the production of the shareholder Fiat were taken over into the fleet. The three four-engine Savoia-Marchetti SM.95 used by SAIDE were operated with 38 passenger seats instead of the 20 seats customary for Alitalia and the 26 seats for the Italian LATI.

The first route ran from Cairo via Alexandria and Athens to Rome. During the summer months from 1949 it was extended to Paris. In the same year another line was set up to Italian Libya from Cairo via Alexandria and Benghazi to Tripoli. The summer route to Paris continued in 1950 with a stopover in Milan. The Tripoli route was extended to Tunis in the French protectorate of Tunisia , but the landing in Alexandria was omitted.

A new connection to Germany was opened in April 1951 by continuing the flight to Rome via Munich to Frankfurt. In the autumn of this year, three flights a week to Beirut via Rome began. This cumbersome route was replaced in May 1952 by a direct line from Cairo to Beirut.

In July 1951, the government of Egypt took over Fiat's 45% stake.

In 1952, SAIDE was taken over by the Egyptian national airline Misrair . On December 1, 1952, the company's own flight operations were stopped, but the profitable route to Tunis continued through Misrair.

Destinations

SAIDE was mainly focused on operating international routes. The route from Cairo to Alexandria was essentially part of flights abroad, even if passengers were transported who only traveled on this part of the route. In the years from 1947 to 1952 there were only a few domestic airlines that connected Africa with countries such as Italy, France, Germany and Greece, not to mention lines within North Africa or the Arab region. In 1951, the route network had a length of 4752 km (simply calculated).

fleet

During its existence SAIDE used the following aircraft:

• 4 × Curtiss C-46 Commando ( aircraft identification SU-AFP, -AFS, -AFU, -AFV)
• 3 × Fiat G.212 (SU-AFE, -AFF, -AFX)
• 3 × Savoia-Marchetti SM.95 (SU-AFC, -AFD, -AGC)

Basic data

In the 1951 operating year, 1,311,105 km of route kilometers were flown.

Incidents

• On October 16, 1949 a Fiat G.212CP of SAIDE ( aircraft registration SU-AFX ) had an accident while taking off from Alexandria airport ( Egypt ). The machine was supposed to fly to Benghazi and was irreparably damaged. All three crew members, the only occupants, survived the accident.

See also

• Former Airlines List (Africa)

literature

• Leonard Bridgman (Ed.): Jane's All The World's Aircraft, 1952-53. Sampson Low, Marston & Company, London 1952.
• John Stroud: European Transport Aircraft since 1910. Putnam & Company, London 1966.
• Ben R. Guttery: Encyclopedia of African Airlines (English). McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina, 1998.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Guttery 1998, p. 54.
2. ↑ Stroud 1966, p. 420.
3. ↑ Stroud 1966, p. 454.
4. ↑ Stroud 1966, p. 453.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jane’s All The World's Aircraft 1952, p. 17.
6. ↑ Guttery 1998, p. 55.
7. ↑ Stroud 1966, p. 421.
8. ↑ Stroud 1966, p. 453.
9. ^ Accident report Fiat G.212 SU-AFX , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on June 1, 2020.