Air India will operate 137 special flights with B747-400, Airbus 310 and Airbus 330 aircraft to facilitate travel of Haj pilgrims to Jeddah and Madina, starting October 20. Air India will additionally operate 117 hub-and-spoke flights to connect passengers to special Haj flights of Saudi Arabian Airlines and NAS Air.

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Air India, which will fly approximately 40,000 pilgrims on these special flights, will also operate 30 extra section flights to meet the requirements of Haj pilgrims.

The Haj flights to Jeddah and Madina with its own aircraft will be operated by Air India from Kolkata, Nagpur, Guwahati, Jaipur, Indore, Aurangabad and Srinagar. The hub and spoke flights will be operated from Patna, Ranchi, Varanasi and Mangalore. Connections to Saudi Arabian flights will be from Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai, and to NAS Air flights from Delhi and Kozhikode. Haj flights will be operated from 19 stations from India this year.

The phase I of the Haj operation to take pilgrims to Jeddah and Madina will be from October 20-November 21, and Phase II to bring them back will be from December 1, 2009, to January 1, 2010, said a press release from Air India.

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