Civil Aviation Sign-Off Can Add Six to Nine Months to a Hurghada Building Permit, Engineers Say

Approvals from Egypt's Civil Aviation Authority have become one of the longest steps in getting permission to build, modify or repair a building in Hurghada, with waits that can run several months and in some cases six to nine months, according to Hurghada residents and engineers following the file quoted by Sada El Balad.

The engineers quoted in the report say they are not disputing the principle. Keeping aircraft and navigation equipment safe from obstructing buildings is not in question, they say, and nor are the fees. What they describe as the problem is the length of the paperwork cycle and the repetition of the same steps for each individual property.

Where the requirement comes from

The rules sit in Civil Aviation Minister's Decision No. 544 of 2024, published in the Egyptian Gazette on 25 June 2024. It sets the zone covered by air easement rights around airports at up to 15 kilometres, and requires bodies and individuals to go back to the Civil Aviation Authority before a building licence is issued inside that zone.

The decision also defines imaginary surfaces that cap heights around a runway. One of them, the approach surface, begins 60 metres beyond the runway threshold and rises at a slope of 1.8% over 2,500 metres, reaching 45 metres above the threshold level at the end of the first sector. The decision allows a licence to be refused where building, adding storeys or a particular use would harm air navigation safety or the efficiency of navigation equipment, and it lists other cases that must be referred to the authority, including towers and structures above 45 metres.

The study on Hurghada airport

Consultant engineer Rami Nabih has prepared a study and memorandum on the file, covering the height conditions inside the air easement zone along with a proposal for simplifying building licences.

Applying the ministerial decision around Hurghada airport, the study puts the distance between the runway threshold and the nearest point of the airport wall, in the direction studied, at about 2,100 metres, and the theoretical permitted height at that point at about 37 metres above the runway threshold level. The memorandum notes that the maximum building height under the licensing sector it refers to in Hurghada does not exceed 16 metres.

What is being proposed

These are proposals under discussion, not a change that has taken effect.

• One engineer notes that most of Hurghada's subdivisions already hold civil aviation approvals setting the conditions for each area, and asks whether those existing approvals could form the basis of a simpler later procedure instead of repeating the full cycle for every application.
• An engineer at Hurghada City Council has proposed that the local unit coordinate directly with civil aviation for a whole subdivision or area in advance, fixing the permitted heights and conditions, after which the resident deals only with the city council.
• Under the same proposal, the fees due to civil aviation would be collected as part of the local procedure and remitted to the competent body under the legal rules, so that a resident does not make a separate administrative trip just to pay and collect an approval. Any additional service charge for the local body, the report notes, would need a legal basis and clear published regulation.

Those behind the proposal stress that it would not mean automatic licences or the removal of technical review, but organising that review in advance, so the conditions are known to the local authority, the resident and the engineer before licensing begins. The report says the remaining step is to study whether such a mechanism could work technically and legally while preserving the Civil Aviation Authority's jurisdiction.

No response from the Civil Aviation Authority appears in the report.