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Tempers fly as Eid rush delays flights; hundreds stranded

By By MD HUMAIDAN JEDDAH: The south terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah witnessed chaos and confusion on Thursday as stranded passengers fought with the airline's frontline staff due to delay in flights and poor services.

According to reports, some airline officials suffered minor injuries in the skirmishes in the south terminal that is exclusively used by Saudi Arabian Airlines .

The chaos at Jeddah's north and south airport terminals was largely due to overcrowding of offloaded passengers and flight delays. With passengers heading to different destinations worldwide various factors led to this heavy rush, especially in the south terminal.

The seasonal rush of passengers bound for their home destinations for Eid Al-Fitr celebration caused the problem and it was compounded by the absence of adequate airport staff. Added to the confusion was the delay or cancellation of flights by different airlines, some of them on "technical grounds."

Though the pressure is not so much at the north terminal, hundreds of stranded passengers either remained at the terminals or were provided hotel accommodation by the airlines they were to fly. But the chaos at the south terminal is continuing.

Eyewitnesses said that tempers were flying high with the limited staff at the airport bearing the brunt of the passengers' ire as many flights were either delayed or overbooked, leaving passengers fuming.

Abdullah Al-Ajhar, vice president for public relations at Saudi Arabian Airlines , when contacted by Arab News, failed to comment on the situation.

Al-Ajhar, when asked what the airline was doing to solve the problems, told this reporter to contact him again after one hour. But when Arab News called him again, he did not pick up his phone. Despite repeated efforts by Arab News to get in touch with Al-Ajhar, the Saudia executive did not respond.

He was contacted by Arab News to find out why a number of Saudia flights were reportedly delayed on Thursday including SV770, SV884, and SV760 flights to Indian cities.

An eyewitness said he had not seen such chaos at the airport throughout this Ramadan. "The continuation of this situation may cause a lot of problems for passengers including health problems and also trigger fistfights between passengers and officials," he said.

There were reports of passengers bound to Egypt and other Middle East countries staying at the airports in large numbers after missing their flights while eyewitnesses reported that some Saudia staff were even roughed up.

Only on Tuesday, Saudi Arabian Airlines had denied reports that it had failed to handle the huge influx of pilgrims in Jeddah in the last days of Ramadan.

"This year we have been successful in organizing the outbound flights of Umrah pilgrims and the flow of flights was smooth," said Waleed Aloloumi, manager media relations at the airline.

However, he confirmed that there were flight delays on Monday. "We are trying to solve the problem caused by the delays. Flights are now leaving on schedule. By tomorrow (Wednesday) all issues will be resolved," he had said.

But on Thursday, not only were the flights to Cairo and other Mideast destinations affected, three flights to India were delayed and this caused additional problems.

Irate passengers and Indian social activists called to negate the report published by Arab News and to emphasize that all was not well at the south terminal. Members of the Indian Consulate General were dispatched to assist the weary travelers caught in the crush.

It was only after the welfare staff of the mission interceded on behalf of the Indian passengers that food and water were provided to them, a consulate source said. Flights SV884 to Kozhikode, SV770 to Chennai and SV760 to New Delhi were postponed leaving nearly 1,000 passengers in the lurch.

Flight SV770, however, took off Thursday evening with 360 passengers, with sources saying that efforts are on to send both the Kozhikode and New Delhi flights soon.

In the north terminal, the cancellation of a PIA flight caused problems, and in Madinah, Saudi Airlines Flight 752 to Mumbai was delayed due to a technical glitch and 260 passengers booked on that flight were stranded.

PIA sources said that one of their flights, which was scheduled to leave for Islamabad on Wednesday afternoon, had been rescheduled to leave with the 134 stranded passengers on a plane that was to arrive on Thursday afternoon.

The passengers left in the plane that was sent Thursday. In addition, the flight to Karachi that was to leave early morning Thursday, will leave early Friday morning. "With that we'll have cleared the backlog," a PIA source said.

In the south terminal, Saudia passengers said there was no guidance from the staff about the fate of their flights. "Whenever we talk to some airport or airline staff, they say this is Eid and we don't have enough staff."

Among the most affected are some 150 passengers who are stranded since Aug. 28, heading for Lahore. Among them are women and children. However, an airline official maintained that they all had been accommodated in different hotels.

In Madinah, 260 Indian passengers were stranded when their early morning flight to Mumbai (SV752) was delayed by a "technical glitch." The consulate officials were alerted by an SMS from a passenger requesting their help, and the airline then accommodated the passengers in a hotel. The rescheduled flight is set to take off Thursday night.

According to a report in Al-Watan, Saudia operated 42 flights to Cairo and Alexandria over the last two days to end the problem of Egyptian pilgrims overcrowding in the Haj Terminal at Jeddah airport. The paper was quoting Egyptian Deputy Consul Mahir Al-Mahdi.

The deputy consul said Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal had directed that extra flights be made available to Egypt to end the problem and that their luggage could be transported by cargo planes.

The governor had ordered the establishment of a committee comprising representatives from the governorate, the Haj Ministry, the General Authority for Civil Aviation, Saudia and other concerned parties to investigate why some Egyptian pilgrims did not depart on time.

"The immediate implementation of the governor's directives helped solve the problem of overcrowding at the Haj Terminal. More than 5,000 Egyptian pilgrims were transported until Thursday," Al-Mahdi said. He did not believe that there was any slackness on the part of the airport officials and said the overcrowding was caused by some pilgrims insisting on taking excess baggage.

Al-Mahdi described skirmishes between pilgrims and airport officials as individual cases which were not deliberate. "A number of passengers lost their temper because their flights were delayed due to excess baggage," he said.

Aloloumi on his part blamed the Umrah companies to be behind the problem as they brought the pilgrims to the airport before their actual travel time. "At some instances, these pilgrims were brought to the airport four days ahead of their reservation," he added.

Aloloumi said the weight of some suitcases was 70 kg while according to IATA the weight of a single suitcase should not exceed 30 kg.

© Arab News 2011