Almaza’s story starts before the aeroplane was ten years old. Baron Empain, the developer of the new desert suburb of Heliopolis, organised an air meeting there in February 1910 — the first in Africa, according to English Wikipedia. The entrants included the French aviators Hubert Latham, Henri Rougier and Raymonde de Laroche and the German Hans Grade. The British pilot Mortimer Singer crashed in practice and withdrew.

British military flying in the area began in the First World War: Air of Authority dates RAF Heliopolis to 1915, with No. 216 Squadron there from 15 April 1921 to 7 October 1941 and No. 208 Squadron from 27 October 1927 to January 1936, among other periods. RAF Heliopolis kept its own station headquarters until 15 March 1947, the same year Almaza passed to the Egyptian Air Force, so for a generation British and Egyptian military flying shared the Heliopolis plateau. English Wikipedia says the Egyptian government named the field Almaza Airport in the 1920s and attributes the name to the explorer László Almásy; that derivation is not confirmed by any other source checked. By 1938 Misr Airwork flew scheduled services from Almaza to Alexandria, Assiut, Nicosia, Haifa and Baghdad.

On 2 June 1932, English Wikipedia says, the first five de Havilland Gipsy Moth trainers of the Egyptian Army Air Force arrived at Almaza from Hatfield. The service article on this site dates their arrival to May 1932; the sources disagree by days, not by the place. The force became independent as the Royal Egyptian Air Force in 1937.

Formal air force training also began here. English Wikipedia’s article on the Air Academy says instruction started at Almaza station in 1938, in a school with five divisions — Flying, Science, Technical, Cadets and Administration — and that by 1951 Almaza had become too small, so a law authorised a new academy near Bilbeis, built and extended until 1961.

In the Second World War the field was RAF Almaza, used by RAF and Commonwealth squadrons including No. 451 Squadron RAAF in 1943–1944, and it passed to the Egyptian Air Force as EAF Almaza in 1947. During the Suez crisis of 1956 British aircraft bombed it several times. English Wikipedia’s Suez Crisis article says the Egyptian Air Force had lost 200 aircraft by the night of 1 November; losses at Almaza itself were not confirmed in the sources checked.

Six years later the field received a very different visitor. On 5 February 1962 Yuri Gagarin, ten months after his flight, was welcomed at Almaza by Vice President Zakaria Mohieddin, at the height of Egypt’s Soviet partnership.

By then the air force had moved its cadets out. The academy at Bilbeis, authorised in 1951 because Almaza had become too small, was completed in 1961, and Hosni Mubarak, later President, taught there and was its director from 1967 to 1969. Almaza kept the roles a capital-city airfield is good for: transport, liaison and the movement of the country’s leaders and guests.

In October 1985 Palestinian gunmen seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. English Wikipedia says the four hijackers were at Almaza Air Base near Cairo before they boarded an EgyptAir Boeing 737 with Abu Abbas; the airliner took off from Cairo at 4:15 pm EST on 10 October. F-14 Tomcats from USS Saratoga intercepted it over the Mediterranean and it landed at Sigonella in Sicily at 6:45 pm EST.

Almaza remains the Egyptian Air Force’s base inside Cairo for transport, helicopters and VIP flights. On 21 July 2023, Egypt Independent reported, three military aircraft left Almaza Air Force Base for Port Sudan with medical aid supplied by the Arab League’s Council of Health Ministers.