the airline had 579 employees. At that time, the fleet comprised one Beech D18S, four DC-3s, six Vikings and six Viscounts. One of the Viscounts crashed into the Mediterranean on 10 April, killing 17 passengers and a crew of three. With registration SU-ALC, the first of three Comet 4Cs was delivered on 9 June. Operations using two of these aircraft started on 16 July the same year. By October 1960, Misrair had Comets deployed on the Cairo–Belgrade–Prague, Cairo–Rome–London, Cairo–Jeddah and Cairo–Khartoum runs, DC-3s on the Cairo–Alexandria–Mersa Matruh, Cairo–Assiut–Luxor, Cairo–Luxor–Aswan and Cairo–Port Said–Alexandria services, and Viscounts were used for the non-stop flights that linked Cairo and Alexandria. An order for two more Comets was placed in November 1960. Syria's association with UAA ended in October 1961, when Syrian Arab Airways was established by the Syrian government in Damascus; the route network and fleet that had been taken over by UAA were returned to the new company. Two more Comets, the and ones, were ordered in early 1961. Three ex-SAS DC-6s were purchased in April 1961. The Cairo–Lagos run was extended to Accra on 12 June and flights to Moscow commenced on 21 June. A contract with Boeing for the purchase of Boeing 707-320B with delivery dates between November 1961 and April 1964 was signed; the deal fell through when the airline could not find financing. On 1 November, a new flight to Karachi and Bombay was launched, and the sixth and seventh Comets were ordered in December; these were delivered in April 1962. Also in 1961, the Cairo–Nicosia run, suspended since the Suez crisis in 1956, was restored, flown with Viscount equipment. Routed via Bangkok and Hong Kong, the Bombay service was extended to Tokyo in May 1962. The three-strong crew of a DC-3 that crashed at Heliopolis on 16 May 1962 died, and 26 more people perished in an accident involving a Comet at Bangkok on 19 July the same year. Two more Comets were acquired in August, entering the fleet in September the same year and during 1963. On 15 February 1963, the route to Baghdad was resumed after a three-year hiatus, but the service was short-lived, as political tensions between Egypt, Iraq and Syria forced the disruption of flights to both this destination and to Damascus; on 1 April, a new service to Rhodesia was inaugurated. On 12 May 1963 a DC-3 crashed near Alexandria, killing 27 passengers