Biman Bangladesh Airlines announced the Hajj flight schedule to and from Saudi Arab to carry
pilgrims under government management.
According to the announcement, a total of four flights of Biman would carry around 1,591 pilgrims
under the government arrangement.The announcement said the first Hajj flight BG-5011 of Biman would depart at 1:45 pm on September 7 for Saudi Arabia with a total of 580 pilgrims of Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Barisal, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Rangpur of package-1 and Dhaka and Chittagong of package-2.
The second flight BG-5015 will depart on September 8 at 10 AM, third flight BG-7015 on September 9 at 8:45 am and the fourth flight BG-035 on October 7 at 11:59 pm. The return Hajj flights will be started on October 20.
Hajj mission officials said that the visa processing has already been started. The training of Hajj medical team was done on August 16-17 and the training of Hajj guides under government management was done on August 17-18.
Biman officials said that Biman will operate a total of 92 dedicated Hajj flights and around 22 regular scheduled flights to carry around 44,500 pilgrims out of 89 thousand.
Starting from September 7 Biman expected to bring the last pilgrim home on November 18, they said.
Saudi Airlines will start Hajj flights from September 8 and will be going on till October 9. The return flight will be started on October 21. Saudi Airlines will operate seven flights per day to carry the pilgrims.
About the Hajj flight schedule, Biman managing director Kevin Steele told New Age, ‘We are all set for the Hajj operations. The first flight is on September 7’.
He assured that Biman has leased one high-density B747 and one B767 supplemented by its own two B777-300ER aircrafts to avoid all sorts of disruption and the Hajj fare has been fixed to USD 1,475 only.
Kevin wished all pilgrims a successful Hajj and sought cooperation from all quarters to make it a success.
Religious affairs secretary Kazi Habibul Awal said at a press conference on August 15 that the number of Hajj passengers declined this time due to some restrictions imposed by the Saudi authorities. Those who had performed Hajj in the last five years would not be allowed to perform the pilgrimage this year.
The Saudi government had cut the number by at least 20 per cent this year for each country sending pilgrims as there are some reconstruction works going on in Makkah and Medina, he added.
Kazi Habibul Awal also said that the Bangladeshi government had taken measures to check trafficking in persons during the Hajj season as every year some pilgrims do not return on completion of the Hajj formalities.
A task force would be engaged this year to further verify the documents at the time of the departure of Hajj pilgrims to check human trafficking during the time, he added.
The number of Hajj aspirants would be around 89,000 this year, of which 1,589 will perform Hajj under the government management and the rest under the private Hajj agencies.
Biman would ferry 45,000 Hajj passengers to and from Jeddah while Saudi Airlines would carry the rest as per an agreement between the two countries.
The Hajj pilgrims will start coming to Ashkona Hajj camp on September 3-4 and the prime minister Sheikh Hasina would inaugurate the Hajj camp on September 6.
Courtesy of New Age
