Saudi Arabian Airlines (SAA) will add 66 domestic and international flights to its operations schedule during the coming school spring break which starts Wednesday and lasts for ten days. This was announced Tuesday by Abdullah Al-Ajhar, SAA's Assistant Manager for Public Relations. “We have added some 54 domestic flights and 12 international flights. We have also increased the seating capacity on 56 international flights from the Kingdom to Dubai, Beirut, Doha, Cairo and Sharm El-Sheikh,” Al-Ajhar said. He pointed out that the additional domestic flights will include 18 flights from Riyadh to Jeddah and back, 20 round trip flights from Abha to Riyadh, four flights from Jeddah to Dammam and back, four round trip flights from Riyadh to Madina and the same number of flights from the capital city to Najran and back. As for the extra international flights, Ajhar said that four additional flights will fly to Kuwait, four flights to Dubai and four other flights to Beirut and back. Al-Ajhar said that SAA has no specific peak season, as its year includes the school spring holidays, as well as the Haj, Umrah and summer seasons. According Al-Ajhar, SAA is careful to take social ties into account when planning its operational programs. “We not only consider business when planning for our flights, we also consider the social issues that form Saudi society,” he said. He added that this is why SAA has made more flights available during school holidays so that families can visit relatives in different parts of the Kingdom. During the recently ended Haj season, SAA carried nearly one million pilgrims on more than 2,000 flights. The airline carried 457,000 pilgrims from Asia with 308,000 international pilgrims being flown directly to Madina. Apart from that SAA provided crew members who spoke a variety of languages and served different dishes to suit the tastes of pilgrims traveling to the Kingdom.
