Air Blue, in a press release today, has rejected the allegations that the government has doubled its Hajj quota. The press release said that there has been no change in the number of hujjaj. According to the official figures released by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Air Blue had been allotted a total of 16,157 hujjaj out of 107,526 government hujjaj on July 5, 2017.
Earlier, rumours were circulating that the government had doubled the quota of Air Blue to take and bring back Hajj attendees from Jeddah and Madina compared to the national airline. PIA has been given the quota to cater 30,000 people whereas Air Blue in its first Hajj operations experience will cater 60,000.
According to sources, the government run civil aviation authority has changed the schedule for PIA operations which is taking the airline towards devastation. The flights were always scheduled to take off at 12:30 pm which has now been changed to 7:30 pm which is causing problems for Hajj attendees coming to the airport from distant districts as the people coming to drop them have to travel back late at night.
Sources also claim that the air crafts being leased for the hajj operations don’t have appropriate storage capacity due to which passengers get trouble finding their luggage once they are in Saudia, which may be a deliberate attempt to give a bad name to the national airline so that others may benefit.