JEDDAH, 16 October 2007 — As anyone who has been to the Jeddah airport recently will tell you: now is not a great time to be flying out. The line simply to enter the international terminal this week was reported in one instance to be a two-hour wait — and this is before the lines to obtain boarding passes. The standard advice for anyone flying out of Jeddah right now is to plan to be at the airport at least four to five hours ahead of the flight — and then not to be surprised if the flight ends up being delayed anyway, especially for flights leaving to destinations that have sent a lot of pilgrims, such as India or Indonesia.

According to the business daily Al-Eqtisadiah yesterday, Umrah pilgrimage operators are wringing their hands over the prospect of having to pay to accommodate pilgrims whose flights might be delayed due to an unplanned-for 15-percent increase in Umrah pilgrims this Ramadan over last year.

Arab News observed one India-bound flight this week that was scheduled to depart at 1:30 a.m. didn’t leave the terminal until after 8 a.m.

Some pilgrim tour operators are reportedly dropping off their groups at the airport long before their flights depart. These groups then spend up to 12 hours or even more literally camped out at the airport, causing more bottlenecking and crowds. People whose flights are leaving in two or three hours are waiting in lines that contain pilgrim groups whose flights might be leaving the following day. This departure crush will likely continue until the middle of November, only to be replaced with pilgrims coming for Haj in December. Buses and ships leaving the region are also booked up, with reports of Egyptian pilgrims setting up camp at Jeddah’s Islamic Port unsure when they will be able to catch a ferry back home.

For the Umrah operators, time is money and therefore they are encouraged to unload their groups as early as possible at the airport, fulfilling their end of the bargain.

“The return crisis is not the result of the manipulation of the domestic Umrah companies but in fact because of the insufficient number of flights and difficulty to get reservations,” said Saad ibn Jameel Al-Qarshi, who heads the Haj and Umrah Committee in the Council of Saudi Chamber of Commerce on Sunday.

He added that the bulk of the pilgrims were still in the Kingdom while only 40 percent of them left to their native countries.

He said the number of foreign pilgrims who came to the country since the Umrah season opened this year in April until the middle of Ramadan touched almost 3 million. The Egyptians topped the list with 560,000 followed by Iranians at 464,000. Pilgrims generally take the chance to do a little religious tourism during their stay, visiting both holy cities and also shopping in Jeddah.

Al-Qarshi agreed that the pilgrims camped out at the airport and other exit points were causing a lot of inconvenience, though he stopped short of blaming tour operators. Instead, he said there aren’t enough airline seats to fulfill the demand. He did take the opportunity to praise the Saudi government’s efforts to get pilgrims to leave in accordance with the terms of their pilgrim’s visas.

Pilgrims staying on after their pilgrimage to find work is a constant problem in the Kingdom. Also, many pilgrims try the “two in one” approach of coming for Umrah and staying beyond their legal limit in order to perform Haj before returning home.