ORIGINAL SUNDAY 8:26 PM REPORT: As KING 5 reported tonight, a local tour group is trying to get out of Egypt, among the ongoing anti-government protests there. What the TV report (embedded above) didn’t mention is that the company that set up the group, Alki Tours, is based in West Seattle, with offices on Fauntleroy Way in Morgan Junction. We talked tonight with Alki Tours’ founder/president Claire Nolan, who says the tour manager whose phone interview you heard in KING’s report, Tyson Verse, is doing an amazing job keeping everyone safe and comfortable. The 35-member tour group includes 12 people who live in West Seattle, according to Nolan, who’s run the travel/tour company – now with clients worldwide – for 18 years.
She tells WSB the group’s 10-day tour was wrapping up when they got to Cairo, after activities including a cruise on the Nile, and found themselves caught in the heart of the protests, with “riots” around the station where they got off a train. No one was threatened or injured; after armed guards escorted the tourists to their hotel, Nolan says, “We were able to get everybody to the airport, and they’re in a secure location” – but they’ve been waiting to find out when the airport, closed because of the political upheaval, will reopen. Most recently, they’ve been told by the U.S. State Department that flights will be chartered to get Americans out of Cairo, and that those flights will start at 2 pm tomorrow Cairo time (about 4 am tomorrow morning our time) – they’ll be taken to Europe, and will connect to US-bound flights from there.
So with all the news about communications being cut off, you might wonder how Alki Tours has stayed in touch with its tour and manager. According to Nolan, incoming phone calls are working, but not outgoing. She says they send “about 100 people a year” on tours to Egypt (here’s next year’s itinerary), from among their 35,000 annual clients, and while they’ve had to deal with unpredictable situations before, having people “actually holed at the airport” is a new situation. She has words of praise for their tour manager, who has been handling “provisions and blankets for everyone.” They’re not sure how soon everyone will be home – depends on what happens once those evacuation flights begin.
1 AM MONDAY UPDATE: It’s now 11 am in Cairo, and that’s the time American travelers interested in those flights, including the local travelers, had been told to gather at a particular terminal (4) at the airport (here’s the State Department advisory). Alki Tours management here said their group was planning to move to that terminal ahead of time to beat the rush.
10:07 AM MONDAY UPDATE: We just stopped by Alki Tours, where they say everybody on their tour is headed out of Egypt, either via Lufthansa or Delta.
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