The first return trips of Egyptian pilgrims on overland tourism Hajj programs set off from the Holy Lands yesterday, after the completion of the Hajj rituals for the 1446 AH season. These trips included 8 tourist buses carrying 327 pilgrims, coming from Saudi Arabia via Jordanian territory and arriving yesterday evening at Egypt's Nuweiba port.
For her part, Samia Samy, Assistant Minister for Tourism Companies Affairs, head of the official tourism Hajj mission and head of the Supreme Committee for Hajj and Umrah, stated that the return plan covers all tourism pilgrims coming by land, totaling 7,500 pilgrims traveling on 180 tourist buses, explaining that the last overland return trip is scheduled to arrive in Egypt on June 20 this month.
She added that the ministry is following every detail of the overland pilgrims' return minute by minute through its field committees stationed at the Halat Ammar land crossing on the Saudi-Jordanian border, the Port of Aqaba in Jordan and Nuweiba port in Egypt, in full cooperation and coordination with the relevant authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, to facilitate procedures and provide maximum comfort and safety for tourism pilgrims during their return. She noted that cooperation with the Saudi and Jordanian authorities had been at the highest level throughout the season.
She praised the outcome of this continuous coordination in cutting the security inspection time for tourist buses at border crossings from 6 hours to just 3 hours, which had a positive impact on the speed and smoothness of tourism pilgrims' movement on both outbound and return trips, revealing that the ministry is studying additional proposals to further reduce the time taken by these procedures in the future, with the aim of shortening the overall trip duration and providing more comfort for tourism pilgrims.
She commended the strong commitment of the Egyptian tourism companies organizing overland Hajj trips, stressing that advance coordination and good planning contributed to the success of the season, both in terms of organization and the services provided to pilgrims in the Holy Lands.
It is worth noting that the first return flights of tourism pilgrims for the 1446 AH Hajj season to the homeland began the day before yesterday from King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the remaining return flights of tourism pilgrims will continue over the coming days from King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah and Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz Airport in Madinah.
