WITH the commence of pilgrims departure phase, Saudi Ground Services Company (SGS), the national and leading ground handling company across all airports in the Kingdom, has dedicated all its capabilities and efforts to serve and facilitate the departure process of departing pilgrims. Based on SGS’s operational statistics for King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah and Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz International Airport (PMAIA) in Madinah, up to Sept. 13, 2017. SGS has completed the departure process for 441,266 pilgrims on 1,641 flights, and handling over 911,500 pieces of luggage on all Hajj flights.

At KAIA, SGS operation team has served 360,436 pilgrims and 1,400 Haj flights, of which 848 flights by international airlines, carrying 219,757 pilgrims, 410 Saudi Arabian Airlines flights carrying 119,059 pilgrims and 59 flights by NAS Air carrying 21,620 pilgrims.

And at PMAIA during the same period, the total number of departing hajj flights that were handled by SGS team were 384 flights, where 62,659 pilgrims left on board of 262 flights via international airlines, 16,353 pilgrims left on board of 57 Saudi Arabian Airlines flights and 1,818 pilgrims left on board of 5 NAS Air flights.

"SGS has dedicated all its efforts to provide the best services to the pilgrims and to complete their departure process in a fast and smooth manner. We will do everything in our power to ensure the success of the pilgrims’ departure phase," said Qaid bin Khalaf Al Otaibi, CEO of SGS.

"Our employees are qualified and well trained for such high operational conditions and we are confident of their capabilities to deliver the company’s vision and provide the highest global standards of ground handling services." Al Otaibi added. — SG