Saudi Arabia: Electric Air Taxis “to Transport Pilgrims During Hajj”

While this link with elec­tric air taxis and Hajj pil­grims was first moot­ed back in Jan­u­ary, the middleeastmonitor.com web­site re-empha­sised the pro­pos­al last week.

The web­site quotes Sau­di Arabia’s Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Logis­tics, Saleh Al-Jass­er, from an inter­view car­ried out by Al-Ara­biya News, who reveals that his Min­istry will ini­tial­ly tri­al the use of fly­ing taxis and drones dur­ing the Hajj Sea­son.

He com­ments, “These rep­re­sent high­ly advanced modes of trans­porta­tion includ­ing taxi appli­ca­tions. There is a race between many spe­cialised com­pa­nies in the trans­port sec­tor to pro­vide the best means of trans­port over the com­ing years.”

Accord­ing to this news chan­nel, the Min­is­ter explained that Sau­di Ara­bia is prepar­ing more flex­i­ble and faster tech­nolo­gies of trans­porta­tion dur­ing the Hajj sea­son to facil­i­tate the pilgrim’s jour­ney, which this year begins on June 14th. Al-Jass­er adds, “We must be at the fore­front in order to ben­e­fit from these ser­vices.” 

It is fan­ci­ful spec­u­la­tion to sug­gest the flights will begin this year, but there is every chance it may be a real­i­ty from 2026 or even 2025 onwards.

Could Joby be Trans­port­ing Pil­grims Dur­ing the Hajj Sea­son?

In ear­ly May, the Sau­di author­i­ties announced the intro­duc­tion of new mea­sures to reduce the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als per­form­ing Hajj ille­gal­ly, with­out per­mit or reg­istry. Accord­ing to a state­ment by the Kingdom’s Gen­er­al Direc­torate of Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty, the new reg­u­la­tions for Hajj require “res­i­dents who wish to enter Makkah to obtain a per­mit from the rel­e­vant author­i­ties.” This was imple­ment­ed on May 4th.

The state­ment stressed that the Sau­di secu­ri­ty per­son­nel at the check­points lead­ing to Makkah will pre­vent entry to any indi­vid­u­als with­out the prop­er per­mits. The new mea­sures come as part of the Kingdom’s efforts to con­trol the flow of pil­grims into holy sites and pro­tect their safe­ty, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the Hajj sea­son.

Employ­ing elec­tric air taxis to trans­port them is one way of achiev­ing this. Not only can this con­trol the num­bers, but avoids ille­gal par­tic­i­pants as an air­craft tick­et becomes a part of the per­mit.

Trag­i­cal­ly the Hajj sea­son has become renowned for a series of deaths to pil­grims. Wikipedia offers a sober­ing list of calami­ties.

Some notable inci­dents include:-

: July 2nd 1990, a stam­pede or crush inside a pedes­tri­an tun­nel (Al-Ma’aisim tun­nel) lead­ing out from Mec­ca towards Mina and the Plains of Arafat led to the deaths of 1,426 pil­grims, many of them of Malaysian, Indone­sian and Pak­istani ori­gin.

: May 23rd 1994, a stam­pede killed at least 270 pil­grims at the Ston­ing of the Dev­il rit­u­al.

: April 9th, 1998, at least 118 pil­grims were tram­pled to death and 180 injured in an inci­dent on Jama­raat Bridge.

: March 5th, 2001, 35 pil­grims were tram­pled to death in a stam­pede dur­ing the Ston­ing of the Dev­il rit­u­al.

: Feb­ru­ary 11th 2003, Feb­ru­ary 11th 2003, the Ston­ing forth Dev­il rit­u­al claimed 14 pil­grims’ lives.

: Feb­ru­ary 1st 2004, 251 pil­grims were killed and anoth­er 244 injured in a stam­pede dur­ing the ston­ing rit­u­al in Mina.

: Jan­u­ary 22nd 2005, a stam­pede through the ston­ing rit­u­al in Mina led to the killing of three pil­grims.

: Jan­u­ary 12th 2006, a stam­pede or crush dur­ing the Ston­ing of the Dev­il on the last day of the Hajj in Mina killed at least 346 pil­grims and injured at least 289 more. The inci­dent occurred short­ly after 13:00 local time, when a bus­load of trav­el­ers arrived togeth­er at the east­ern access ramps to the Jama­raat Bridge. This caused pil­grims to trip, rapid­ly result­ing in a lethal cold col­lapse. An esti­mat­ed two mil­lion peo­ple were per­form­ing the rit­u­al at the time.

: Sep­tem­ber 24th 2015, at least 2,236 pil­grims were killed dur­ing a crush and stam­pede. The Sau­di Gov­ern­ment has yet to release an offi­cial report. An Asso­ci­at­ed Press (AP) report com­piled from offi­cial reports and state­ments totaled the deaths at at least 1,470, over 700 more than the fig­ures from Sau­di author­i­ties, and the worst toll so far in Mec­ca. The AP lat­er updat­ed its esti­mate to 2,411 pil­grims killed.

Ear­li­er this year, Sau­di Ara­bi­an Air­lines unveiled plans to oper­ate Lil­i­um eVTOL Jets to fer­ry Hajj pil­grims between King Abdu­laz­iz Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Jed­dah and hotels in Makkah. Sau­di Ara­bia intends to buy around 100 Lil­i­um air­craft to oper­ate the ser­vice.

Saudia Ara­bi­an Air­lines “to Oper­ate Fly­ing Taxis for Fer­ry­ing Pil­grims Between Jed­dah and Makkah”

Hajj, one of the five pil­lars of Islam, is the annu­al pil­grim­age to the holy city of Makkah in Sau­di Ara­bia. Many thou­sands of Mus­lims vis­it Masjid al-Haram for their Hajj pil­grim­age. 

(News Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com) 

(Top image: Pil­grims attend­ing Masjid al-Haram — Cred­it: Mohammed J. A. Alaloul/Anadolu Agency)

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