JEDDAH, 30 January 2005 — “You’re going to get stuck in Riyadh,” my travel agent warned. I was about to be faced with a passenger’s worst nightmare: Traveling during Haj. My return from Riyadh to Jeddah was supposed to be on Jan. 13 which was during the height of the Haj season. Since this was not the first time I had not had a confirmed seat, I wasn’t too worried. I thought I would just put my name on the waiting list and catch the next — or any one of the 14 flights — from Riyadh to Jeddah every day.
I arrived at King Khaled International Airport about 5 p.m. I was told to take the escalator downstairs and put my name on the waiting list. As I went down on the escalator, I was amazed to see hundreds of disgruntled men crowding around one counter, screaming for assistance from the only Saudia employee at the single open counter. There were no women there except for one Filipina nurse who was standing a little back from the mob. She told me that she was returning from vacation with a valid ticket but when she tried to check her baggage, she was told the name on her boarding pass was incorrect. As she went from counter to counter, vainly trying to get the name on the boarding pass changed, she had missed her flight. That had been two days earlier and now, despite not having slept for 48 hours, she still managed to smile and seemed optimistic about getting a ticket in the teeming mass of screaming, pushing, irate men.
Another passenger, Ahmad, had had his name on the waiting list for 24 hours but his turn to board a flight was yet to come. He was as helpless as the nurse. “If this was another country, I could have just used another airline but Saudia knows that we have no choice.”
At that moment, a young Saudi came up to us and told us if we could round up at least three other people, he would take us to Jeddah for only SR350 each. Ahmad thanked him but said that he would rather wait. When I asked him why he had turned down such a good offer, he said, “Good offer? Are you kidding me? These people drive like maniacs. They drive at break-neck speeds and if, by some luck, you live through their crazy charade of so-called driving, you won’t get there for eight hours. I’d rather walk.”
The single Saudia employee at the counter, Bassam, had begun to write down everyone’s name on a list. Since lines are unheard of in the Kingdom, people were being served on a first push-shove-trample-the-poor-guy-in front-of-you basis. After standing there for more than three hours, it was my turn and my name was written on the list. I was stranded passenger No. 582.
Convinced that the only solution to my problem was to leave and check into the hotel I had left earlier, I started out of the airport when I saw all the passengers running madly upstairs. Naturally, I was curious and so I followed them. We soon learned that an extra flight had been put on and that boarding passes were being issued.
Probably due to the number of passengers, all boarding passes were in fake names. I became “Abdullah Al-Turki” while Ahmad’s boarding pass carried the name “M. Al-Ghamdi.” After I got my boarding pass, I noted the departure time was 2:45 a.m. Happy that at last I had a ticket to Jeddah, I checked my baggage and sat down in the departure lounge. At 3:30 we were still waiting for the 2:45 departure and, of course, we were told nothing. I went to the desk and was told that the flight had been delayed until 5 a.m.
Ironically, one of my fellow passengers was a Saudia employee and after he made a few inquiries, he told me that the real reason for the delay was that there was no crew available to fly it. The pilots and the cabin crew had not been informed on time so we paying passengers had to endure an extra four-hour delay just because of Saudia’s failure to communicate with its staff.
The man explained, “This kind of thing is normal at this time of year as Saudia diverts the majority of its aircraft to transporting the millions of pilgrims coming for Haj.” But why does the coming of Haj have to mean that domestic travel is thrown into total disarray?
