Study your original ticket carefully. And, take Lufthansa next time!
Your original ticket should have the amount of the change fee printed on it. The airlines, unfortunately, don't print this information clearly. One would think they are trying to hide this information from the customer. Because the amount is usually appears toward the lower right of your ticket, and is buried in a pile of airline codes. Look for something like "CHG337.00" which, of course, would indicate you should be charged $337.00 for changes. If you purchased your ticket in Egyptian currency, then the figure, after "CHG", should reflect the charge in Egyptian currency.
If the amount appearing on your ticket is LESS than $337.00, or its Egyptian equalivalent, you should try to find-out if there is an Egyptian counterpart to the US small claims court. You could probably sue Egypt Air here, but you would need to be in a city to which Egypt Air flies, and then you would have to be in the US long enough for your case to come-up. If you sued Egypt Air in Queens County, New York (the location of JFKAirport), your case would not come-up until well beyond the three months you have left to stay in the US.
In theory, you can sue an airline in any state. However, if, for example, you sued Egypt Air here in my state of Wyoming, and you got a judgement, you probably would not have any assets to seize and liquidate if Egypt Air refused to pay.
Often, the comfort and convenience of flying non-stop is not worth it if you are traveling with an airline that spends most of its time trying to figure-out how to rip-off, and otherwise make its customers miserable. This is particularly true of all, but one, of the US "legacy carriers" (American, Delta, Northwest, United, US Airways.) Continental is worth taking a chance with, but only in first class.
Lufthansa can be every bit as rude as Egypt Air. However, Lufthansa also prides itself on being on-time and, in general, being accurate. So, if you can cut-through a nasty Prussian attitude you will find, at the bottom of it all, that Lufthansa is really a decent airline to deal with. From the USA, service to Cairo, on Lufthansa, is one-stop (a change of planes in Frankfurt.)
Good luck!
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