Tuesday, October 10, 2017

The leading national ground handling Saudi Ground Services Company (SGS) has concluded 1438H Haj, with the departure of the last batch of pilgrims by Thursday, Oct. 5.

During the departure phase, SGS dedicated all its capabilities and efforts to ensure facilitating the departure process of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims on daily basis. As per SGS’ operational statistics, by the end of the departure phase, SGS employees at King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah and Prince Muhammad Bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Madinah, successfully completed procedures for 1.29 million pilgrims on 4,730 flights, and handling around 2 million pieces of luggage on all departing Haj flights.

At KAIA, the SGS operation team served 831,048 pilgrims on 3,114 Haj flights, of which 2,091 flights by international airlines, carrying 545,028 pilgrims, 846 Saudi Arabian Airlines flights carrying 218,572 pilgrims and 177 flights by NAS Air carrying 67,448 pilgrims.

While in Madinah, the total number of departing Haj flights that were handled by SGS team were 1,616, where 291,140 pilgrims left on board 1,082 flights via international airlines, 156,087 pilgrims left on board of 479 Saudi Arabian Airlines flights and 16,840 pilgrims left on board 55 NAS Air flights.

"Despite the increase in number of this year’s pilgrims and the tough operational conditions, we have managed to provide smooth handling services to all the pilgrims during the departure phase," said Omar Mohammed Najjar, CEO of SGS.

“We appreciate and acknowledge the great efforts of our employees, who worked relentlessly to ensure providing the best and highest standards of ground handling services to the Haj flights and all other scheduled flights at all airports around Kingdom.” Najjar added.

Source: http://saudigazette.com.sa/article/519045/SAUDI-ARABIA/SGS-concludes-departure-phase-for-Hajj-1438