Air India is all set to operate 137 special flights to facilitate the travel of Haj pilgrims to Jeddah and Madina, from October 20, 2009. The flights will be operated using B747-400, Airbus 310 and Airbus 330 aircrafts. In addition to this, the airline will operate 117 hub-and-spoke flights to connect passengers to special Haj flights of Saudi Arabian Airlines and NAS Air.
Air India will help around 40,000 pilgrims in their travel, with its own aircrafts. Haj flights will fly from 19 stations out of India this year. The flights to Jeddah and Madina will start from Kolkata, Nagpur, Guwahati, Jaipur, Indore, Aurangabad and Srinagar, whereas the hub-and-spoke flights will be operated from Patna, Ranchi, Varanasi and Mangalore.
Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai will provide the connections to Saudi Arabian flights and Delhi and Kozhikode will serve as a link to NAS air flights. The phase I of Haj operation will be to take pilgrims to Jeddah and Madina. It will start from October 20 and last till November 21. The pilgrims will be brought back in phase II, which that will start from December 1 and will last till January 1, 2010.
