RIYADH — During the current Haj season, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has implemented several precise standards to improve the experience of the Guests of Allah from the time they arrive at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah and Prince Muhammad bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Madinah. The pilgrims are then shuttled through buses of their respective campaigns and then to the direction of their places of residence, while passing through the services provided by the Ministry of Health and finally receiving their luggage and going through customs procedures. In order for GACA to improve its passengers experience at the airports, it keeps working according to standards and performance indicators, through which it monitors and supervises the services provided to the passengers and involve the passengers and the stakeholders in the betterment of these services. In this regard, GACA has taken the opportunity to improve passenger's experience as one of its top priorities in order to provide the best possible services in accordance to the best international standards. GACA has taken upon itself to improve the level of service offered to passengers in general and services provided to the Guests of Allah in particular. This comes from GACA regulatory and supervisory role in the civil aviation sector and airports in particular. GACA oversees the quality of Haj services in accordance to accurate and precise standards throughout its airports. This in an effort to overcome all difficulties that may face the pilgrims while performing the Haj rituals, and ensuring the best quality of services provided, while communicating with the relevant authorities in the event of any observations, so it can be dealt with in a timely manner. GACA duties of monitoring service quality and customer protection are implemented through a specialized department within the authority, and start from the pilgrims' arrival at the terminals to the shuttling process and getting on their respective campaign buses on to their place of places of residence. This is achieved through the cooperation of various relevant authorities at the airport to overcome any obstacles that they may face. Moreover, in order to provide distinguished experiences that contributes to raising the satisfaction standards, GACA has supervised and evaluated the quality of services. Furthermore, GACA is working on improving the pilgrims' experience at Jeddah airport round-the-clock for the past over a year. GACA is keen to highlight its achievement in developing and improving the services provided to all its passengers throughout the Kingdom airports. An achievement that is considered to be at advanced and competitive level to the best of international standards. In the past few years, the Kingdom succeeded in providing the necessary requirements for the convenience of the pilgrims and continuously kept developing its service and elevating them to high international quality. To this, the Kingdom is benefiting from its rich accumulated experience in crowd management and has succeeded in achieving a remarkable success rate. This has made the Haj experience easier, including the journey of obtaining visa abroad; obtaining permits for the pilgrims coming from within the country, and all requirements needed in the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah, and other holy sites.
