Travel agencies, airlines losing out to MERS
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The Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in Saudi Arabia has affected minor Hajj travel and airline businesses in the country, with the desire from Muslims in the country to go on small pilgrimages dropping.
Some people are choosing to delay or cancel their trips, despite making plans for them for a long time.
“We recorded 20 per cent delays and 20 per cent cancellations,” Thayiba Tora Haj and Hajj travel agency president director Artha Hanif said yesterday.
She said it was mostly people from the upper-middle class who either delayed or cancelled their trips, while those in the lower-income strata chose to go ahead with their plans.
The firm is calculating losses suffered from the delays and cancellations.
Meanwhile, president director of Garuda Indonesia, Emirsyah Satar, said the airline had cancelled some of its daily Jakarta-Jeddah flights due to the drop in demand.
“Many pilgrims are cancelling their flights,” he said, without elaborating on how many flights they had cancelled since the outbreak of MERS.
Meanwhile authorities at Adi Soemarmo International airport in Surakarta, Central Java, are increasing the use of thermoscanners to see if passengers returning from the Middle East may be affected by MERS.
Victims of MERS show flu-like symptoms, including high fever and respiratory problems.
Even though the airport’s operation and readiness section head Rini Sri Rahayu acknowledged that there were currently no direct flights to Jeddah, she said pilgrims who flew from Jeddah had first transited in either Malaysia or Singapore before arriving at Adi Soemarmo.
“International flights to and from Malaysia and Singapore are scheduled every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday,” she said.
The thermoscanners have been set up at the arrival gates of the airport and Rini explained that they had been at the airport since the 2006 swine-flu epidemic.
The scanners are designed to detect anyone with a body temperature of over 38 degrees Celsius, and if such a passenger is found, a camera will take a picture of them before they are sent to the Semarang Port Health Office for a proper checkup.
