Airport
Sharm El Sheikh International Airport (SSH)
Sharm El Sheikh's airport is the one Egyptian gateway where a real decision gets made in the arrivals hall rather than at home: the free permit that covers the south of the Sinai peninsula, or the full entry that also opens the mainland. Most arrivals are holiday traffic landing in waves and walking straight onto a transfer, so the terminal fills and empties around the schedule. Knowing which of the two you landed in, and which stamp you want, is most of what the place asks of you.
Updated 2026-09-22
- CodesSSH · HESH
- Passengers per year (2025)9,046,690
- Elevation43 m
- ServesSharm El-Sheikh
Booking links go to our partner Trip.com — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Two terminals on one airfield
The airport works as two buildings. The main international terminal is the larger and more modern, and it is where most European flights arrive and where the official taxi rank sits; the second is older, refitted, and takes a share of international traffic alongside domestic services. Which of them you land in depends on the carrier and the time of year, so the boarding pass beats the assumption.
Both buildings sit on the same apron, and a move between them happens outside security — which matters only if a connection splits across the two. The bigger constraint is the wave: when several holiday flights land within the same stretch the immigration hall is full, and when none do it is empty. Where you fall in that pattern decides how long the arrival feels.
The permit decision in the arrivals hall
Eligible travellers staying on the peninsula can be issued a free permit on the spot instead of buying a visa. It covers the south of Sinai — the resort bays, the coast running north toward the dive towns, and the monastery road into the interior — and it does not cover the mainland, so Cairo, Giza and the Nile Valley sit outside it.
That makes it a choice rather than a formality, and it is made at the counter, for the whole trip, before anyone asks about the second week. A traveller with any mainland plan takes the full entry instead, arranged online beforehand or bought at the bank window before immigration. Who qualifies for which, and how long each one lasts, is set by the entry rules for Egypt and not by the counter.
Out of arrivals: the transfer, the rank and the fare
Most people are met. Holiday bookings put a representative with a board in the arrivals hall and a coach outside, and hotels put a driver in arrivals for anyone who asks in advance — the sensible option on the late-night arrivals this airport specialises in. Marked taxis wait at the rank outside the main terminal whenever a flight lands.
Taxis here are not metered by habit, so the price is agreed before the bags go in the boot, and the hotel desk is the best source for what a given run should cost. App-based rides are thin enough on the peninsula that no arrival plan should depend on one appearing. Getting around Egypt looks different in Sinai than it does in the Nile Valley, and the airport is where that becomes obvious.
The peninsula this airport opens
The resort bays start almost at the perimeter and spread along the coast around Sharm El Sheikh itself, which is why some transfers end before you have found your sunglasses and others keep going. Further out, the coast road north follows the Gulf of Aqaba to the smaller dive towns — a proper drive rather than a hotel hop, and one most people make later in the trip.
Inland, the mountain road climbs toward the monastery and the sunrise walks above it, and those departures leave in the middle of the night rather than the morning. It is an itinerary the airport quietly shapes: a flight landing late leaves very little night to sleep through beforehand. Desert camps and canyon trips run out of the same towns.
Connecting onward: Cairo and the mainland
Domestic flights to Cairo are the practical link to everything the peninsula is not — the Nile Valley, the Western Desert, the long-haul departures — and they are also the moment a Sinai permit stops being enough. Anyone intending to fly on into the country needs the entry that allows it, decided on arrival rather than discovered at the gate.
On a connecting itinerary, check whether the bags are booked all the way to the last airport, because holiday flights and scheduled domestic flights are often sold as separate tickets even when one agent booked them both. Separate tickets mean collecting the bags, leaving the hall and checking in again, which is a different amount of time from a walk to a gate.
Departures: the last dive, the last day, the way home
The departure people underestimate is the one that follows a dive. A surface interval is needed between the last dive of a trip and a flight, and reputable dive centres will ask about your departure before they sell you the final day on the boat — planning the last day around the flight rather than the reverse is the whole trick. Travel cover that includes diving belongs to the same decision — the health and safety side of a Red Sea trip is settled before it starts.
Flights out cluster late at night, which leaves a gap between hotel check-out and the airport that has to be planned: a day-use room, the hotel's luggage store, or a last afternoon on a beach you have already paid to leave. Change leftover pounds before security rather than after, and an eSIM arranged at home saves the counter hunt at both ends of the trip.