RIYADH —The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, has taken many health and preventive measures, which arriving passengers will be subjected to in stages, in their repatriation flights to the Kingdom.

The measures are applied from the time of their arrival at the Kingdom's international airports — King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah and King Fahd International Airport in Dammam —until they board the buses assigned to them.

The measures were taken by the participating government agencies — Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Tourism and GACA — to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus during flights intended to repatriate citizens wishing to return to the Kingdom.

The steps taken include 12 stages of measures being applied, once the repatriated citizens arrive at the airport of the country of departure and until their arrival at the Kingdom’s airports (Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam) and until exiting the airport.

A medical examination of passengers at the airport of the country of departure is carried out in the first stage, before they board the plane in which the seating arrangements take social distancing into account to ensure that there are enough spaces between the passengers.

On arriving at the Kingdom’s airports, passengers get off the plane in an orderly manner while maintaining safe distance between themselves. Furthermore, priority is given to processing their luggage off the plane to ensure that passengers do not wait for a long time in the baggage claim area.

GACA has also provided a sterilization area through which sterilizers and masks are provided to passengers at the gates, while ensuring that all passengers properly sanitize their hands and wear masks in the correct manner until all procedures are completed.

The Ministry of Health has allocated a checkpoint through which all arriving passengers pass through mandatory thermal cameras area to ensure the safety of passengers. All passengers and flight crew are subjected to a preliminary medical examination by a specialized medical team to determine the needs of any passengers for an advanced medical isolation.

If a corona case among passengers is suspected that particular passenger is isolated from the rest of the passengers and a safe path is activated to transfer the case. Meanwhile, passengers are required to sterilize their hands before entry to passport control and being fingerprinted.

The passport procedures are cleared while the passengers maintaining safe distance. In the customs inspection area, the hand luggage will be inspected with passengers still keeping a safe distance. In the event of a secondary inspection of the luggage, a distance of at least (1.5 m) is kept between the customs officer and the passenger.

Ground services providers will assist passengers in the baggage handling area. Meanwhile, passengers passing through the final gate in the customs inspection area will go through without change in the procedures, all while maintaining a safe distance between each other.

Passengers will be sorted during the last stage while exiting and will be met by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Tourism officials according to their destinations. Passengers will then be guided to place their luggage in the luggage cart and board the buses assigned to them from the transport fleet of the Ministry of Education. This is in addition to securing the area and isolating it by airport authorities.

GACA has harnessed all its capabilities and taken all the necessary measures and procedures to serve citizens abroad who wished to return to the Kingdom, in compliance with the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense (may God protect them both).

Furthermore, GACA, in cooperation with the relevant government agencies, has also scheduled the repatriation flights and distributed flight times in coordination with the national carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines.

This is in addition to preparing a joint operations command post in the three international airports with the participation of a number of relevant authorities with the aim of coordination among the government agencies concerned and uniting efforts to receive the repatriated citizens to the Kingdom. — SG