By IANS,
Mumbai: National carrier Air India will operate 137 special flights from Tuesday to fly nearly 40,000 pilgrims during the ensuing Haj season, an airline spokesman said here Friday.
Besides these, Air India will also operate 117 hub-and-spoke flights to connect passengers to special Haj flights of Saudi Arabian Airlines and NAS Air, and 30 extra section flights.
Flights to Jeddah and Madina on Air India’s own B-747-400, Airbus-310 and Airbus-330 aircraft will be operated from Kolkata, Nagpur, Guwahati, Jaipur, Indore, Aurangabad and Srinagar.
The hub-and-spoke flights will be operated from Patna, Ranchi, Varanasi and Mangalore. This year, the carrier will operate Haj flights from 19 Indian stations.
The connections to Saudi Arabian Airlines flights will be available from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Connections to NAS Air flights will be available from Delhi and Kozhikode.
Flying pilgrims to Jeddah and Madina, starting Oct 20 will continue till Nov 21. The return phase will start Dec 1 and continue till Jan 1, the spokesman said.