Return Hajj flights start today
The return hajj flights will start from today with an aircraft of Biman Bangladesh Airlines carrying 582 pilgrims home from Jeddah.
The flights will continue till November 30 and during the period Biman will carry 54,173 pilgrims who had initially travelled with the airline to Jeddah, said a Biman press release.
Civil Aviation Minister Faruk Khan will receive the first batch of 582 pilgrims, who went for hajj under government management, at Shahjalal International Airport at 3:15pm.
Officials said Biman's two Boeing 777-300ERs, two DC-10s and a rented Boeing 747 aircraft will carry the pilgrims home in 134 hajj and scheduled flights on Dhaka-Jeddah route.
This year a total of 110,550 devotees from Bangladesh performed hajj. Along with Biman, two airlines of Saudi Arabia carried the pilgrims.
Biman officials hoped that they will successfully complete the hajj mission though success has been marred with an unprecedented flight schedule chaos, which threw flight plans of several thousand regular Biman flyers into complete disarray.
The prime reason behind Biman's regular flight schedule disaster, which persisted for three weeks from September 12, was the authorities' ambitious decision to ferry more than twice the hajj pilgrims it did last year, said officials.
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