JEDDAH — The Saudi Cultural Mission in Washington has blamed the travel problems faced by scholarship students in the United States on the ticketing agent and the Saudi Arabian Airlines. Amid severe criticisms and condemnations, the struggle for getting travel reservations by male and female Saudis studying in the US to come home for their annual vacation has exceeded 30 days. The cultural mission finally broke its silence on the issue and blamed the booking agent for the problem. In a tweet in response to a student's query about the delay in issuing tickets, leaving many Saudi students unable to utilize the summer break to travel home to spend the holy month of Ramadan, the cultural attaché said they had completed all transactions and requests related to travel tickets immediately and the students must communicate with the reservation agent to get their tickets. An employee in the reservation agent's office said the decision of the cultural mission to issue tickets on Saudi Airlines only was responsible for exacerbating the crisis. A number of scholarship students used the hashtag #lateticketsforscholarshipstudents to share an image of the price of one of the tickets through the application of Saudi Arabian Airlines. The price of the business class ticket on May 26 from Washington to Riyadh with a five-hour stop in Jeddah was SR56,000. The price does not exceed SR5,000 at normal times and the students suspect a price manipulation. A source told Okaz/Saudi Gazette the number of scholarships students expected to return to the Kingdom from the United States for their annual vacation and Ramadan was 30,000. More than 15,000 ticket applications have already been processed and approved since the beginning of May, with an average of 500 applications completed daily, he said. Saudi Arabian Airlines operates 17 flights a week to Jeddah and Riyadh from the US cities of Dallas, Washington, New York and Los Angeles. The capacity of each flight does not exceed 300 passengers.
