In the U.S., events that place the highest levels of demand on the business-aviation ecosystem are often associated with vacation, entertainment and the holidays—the Superbowl, say, Thanksgiving or the winter holiday season around Christmas.
In the Arabian peninsula, it is a religious duty that anchors the working year for many sector professionals, with millions of people heading for the cities of Jeddah and Medina as they travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to complete the Hajj pilgrimage.
Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, and Muslims must complete it at least once in their lifetime. Pilgrims arrive and depart from either Jeddah or Medina, and travel overland to Mecca. Getting to and from Jeddah and Medina—even for Saudi nationals—invariably involves air travel. And, while some VIPs or high-net-worth individuals will use private jets, most pilgrims arrive and depart on airliners.
Facilitating this huge annual task falls to a small number of flight-support companies, one of whom is the United Arab Emirates-based Aviation Services Management (ASM). The company was founded in 1998 in the UK and has been supporting Hajj pilgrimage flights almost since its inception. For the 2024 Hajj season the firm handled around 500 flights. A handful of those were VIPs using business jets, but the vast majority were unscheduled airliners. Altogether, the flights the firm supported carried a total of approximately 175,000 pilgrims — almost 10% of the official 1.8 million total.