Nesma Airlines plans to add a pair of Airbus A330s to its registry by next summer, chief executive Ashraf Lamloum has confirmed.

The Egyptian carrier will place the widebodies with its Saudi sister airline for use on Hajj and Umrah flights, which are typically operated on a charter basis.

"We are seriously considering right now to add at least two Airbus 330s to our Egyptian A.O.C. [Air Operator's Certificate]," Lamloum told me during an interview in Cairo. "They will come here under our A.O.C. with Egyptian crew, Egyptian maintenance, and then [we will] wet-lease them to our sister company."

Registering the aircraft in Egypt brings cost advantages over placing them directly on Nesma's Saudi A.O.C., he noted.

The airframes will have a maximum age of 13 years and will be used for year-round flights to the Far East and West Africa, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Senegal. Approximately 8.3 million foreign pilgrims visited the kingdom for the Hajj and Umrah in 2017 - most of them coming from non-Arab Asian or African countries.

Lamloum is hopeful that the aircraft will arrive "between June and September" next year, though he does not rule out a delay.

The Egyptian carrier currently has three narrowbodies on its registry - two A320s and one A319 - which it deploys on a mixture of charter flights to Europe and scheduled flights to Saudi Arabia. The charter network was grounded in 2016 due to Egypt's geopolitical troubles but resumed last year and now accounts for more than half of all flights.

Both of the A320s will be replaced with younger models when their leases expire in 2019.

Asked about network development plans from Cairo, Lamloum said strong competition between Egyptian carriers is impacting profitability and necessitates a cautious approach to expansion.

"We are in a very unstable period so we prefer to keep the well-known markets with the well-known revenue, before investing and injecting more for new markets," he said, referring to Nesma's half-a-dozen existing Saudi links. Longer-term, the airline is interested in flying to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Iraq.

Nesma has also formally asked Egypt's Civil Aviation Authority for access to Dammam and Medina, but without apparent success.