“Strange that it was at 37000 ft when it was 10 miles out, no?”
Extremely strange——makes absolutely no sense.
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10 miles from land or 10 miles from the airport?
10 miles out from Egypt airspace. Still a hundred or more miles from Cairo. Most flights I’m on the pilot comes on just after you feel the plane start to descend and they always say we are about 60-65 miles away from our destination and have begun our descent and they usually give a weather and gate update.
The U.S. has an air defense zone off the coast. Maybe Egypt has something similar and it was 10 miles from that. If so, it could be maybe 210 miles off the coast, but 10 miles from the air defense zone?
Like most other countries including the US, Egypt maintains an “Air Defense Identification Zone” where it controls the airspace for civil traffic and patrols militarily. This ADIZ is not the traditional naval 12 mile boundary but can extend a hundred miles or more offshore. 10 miles into Egyptian controlled airspace is nowhere close to the point where you need to begin to descend to the airport.
Click on this link to go to an image that displays airspace limits - look at the offshore lines to see where various countries say their airspace ends: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/VAAC_Coverage.jpg
Egyptian airspace starts well out over the Med.
