KHUJAND, September 25, 2008, Asia-Plus — After nearly three-day delay, a plane with 97 pilgrims on board flew to Mashhad Thursday afternoon at last, Rustam Iskandarov a spokesman for the international terminal at the Khujand airport, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
As it had been reported earlier, 97 residents of the Sughd and Khatlon provinces had spent nearly three days at the Khujand airport weighting for the flight.
The charter flight Khujand-Mashhad (Iran) operated by Tajik national air carrier TajikAir was supposed to take place on September 23 at 7:00 a.m. but it was delayed.
Passengers on this flight are 97 people from the Sughd and Khatlon provinces who intend to perform Umrah (a pilgrimage to Mecca performed by Muslims that can be taken at any time of the year).
Umrah is sometimes called the ”minor pilgrimage” or ”lesser pilgrimage”, the Hajj being the ”major” pilgrimage and which is compulsory for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it. According to some schools of Islamic thought, the Umrah is not compulsory but highly recommended.
The passengers included elderly people, the oldest of them is 87-year-old, and some of them needed medical aid. Some sources say the passengers paid more than 2,000 US dollars each for this flight.
According to the TajikAir administration, the national air carrier is not to blame for the flight delays. “The point is that the tour operator Eurotour that was engaged in organization of participation of the Tajik Muslims in Umrah has not solved all organizational issues properly; the pilgrims had Saudi Arabia’s visas but did not get transit visas without which the Iranian MFA does not receive arriving foreign pilgrims,” the TajikAir official said.
According to him, the tour operator obtained transit visas for the pilgrims only on Thursday.
