[SimonS1]

I lost count of the number of times I was delayed between Riyadh and Jeddah whilst the cabin crew attempted to rearrange passengers to deal with this issue. Not just the odd passenger but usually dozens of people being shifted around.

Maybe having a ladies only section will help sort this out.

[MrMichael]

Do Saudi have any female pilots?

[MartynSinclair]

apparently so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XVZ0EHrQ7E

[Ekond222]

Canukland
‘Maybe Saudi airlines should re-brand itself Taliban Air.’

That is a horrible comment!!!!

[LuganoPirate]

I’m not so sure she’s flying with Saudia Martyn. I think she’s a personal pilot for Al Waleed. I don’t think Saudia would ever put a female pilot in a cockpit with a male pilot for all the usual reasons.

[rferguson]

They DEFINITELY do not employ female Saudi cabin crew so would be surprised if they employed a saudi female pilot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27125689

Are there any islamic forumites that can educate me a little on the restrictions placed on women in Saudi Arabia? Is it religious or cultural? Or is it specific to the branch of islam that Saudi’s practise? I ask because I notice that some airlines from some quite strict islamic countries (PIA, Egyptair, Iran Air, Malaysian, Garuda for instance) employ local women from their countries. Whereas all the airlines in the Gulf only employ local males and foreign females. As an aside I used to LOVE chatting with the Iran Air crew on Hong Kong slips some years back. Amazingly hospitable people. And I was very surprised that all the female crew were in fact Iranian.

[MartynSinclair]

LP – she will still be flying with a second male pilot… probably unrelated…

One rule for Saudi and one for the others…

[DavidGordon10]

Canucklad – absolutely with you …. except maybe for the final comment!

I may, in my role, be required to travel to any country in the world, but there are some countries where the local customs are such that I am, let us say, less enthusiastic than is my normal.

[lloydah]

Canucklad – count me in too. 100%

[1nfrequent]

LuganoPirate – heh! All it takes though is for one European woman on a Saudi flight to find herself stuck at the back of the plane (for example) and it could become a law suit.

rferguson – so far as I’m aware it’s cultural. As I said, interpretation of the Koran is divided on whether it prescribes segregation of the genders en masse. If you’re an individual woman, then the Koran says that you’re to avoid unchaperoned contact with a man but it doesn’t go further than that.

When I was in the UAE I had a meeting set up with a senior Emirati and he insisted on having a third party in the room because he was concerned about how it could be interpreted – nothing to do with religion and everything to do with playing down potential for gossip and smears.

1F

[PeterCoultas]

Canuklad: totally agree and even with your (Ekond) “horrible comment”

Sadly i assume the excuse for such segregation is similar to that given to justify women being fully veiled, namely that men cannot control themselves….

rather than enforcing veils or segregation a better solution would be to use the good islamic punishment for such men and cut off the offending member

[first_class_please]

I`ve been living in Saudi for over 15 years now, so have experienced all the onboard seating requirements. One of the main issues is that the expat travel agents, mostly from Indian Subcontinent and also the staff in saudia offices, just do not offer / promote the fact that pre-seating allocation is available.

This leads to families of 6+ arriving at airport to check in and being assigned seats spread over different rows, when a decent agent would have allocated seats at time of booking.

Internet reservations are building, but a lot of the tribal travellers are not yet savy with this.

From this mornings national paper – http://www.arabnews.com/news/684746

Accusations that the Daily Mail made up a story. Who would of thought that.

[Charles-P]

A potentially unpopular and perhaps offensive opinion I know but this is my view.

Why on earth is anyone, anywhere in the world living their lives based around the fairy stories linked to an invisible, magical man in the sky who it seems is far more concerned about the reproductive rights of women and what they have on their heads than he is about famine, injustice, poverty and war ?

Far from “respecting” faith and beliefs I firmly believe we should be questioning them and asking why we as a world society are still introducing artificial barriers such as segregated seating on aircraft because some nutjob thinks it says that in his ‘special’ book.

EDIT
Let me make clear my view is not just directed toward Islam, I think all religion is bonkers.

Rant over.

[PeterCoultas]

Charles-P +1

some sanity here

[Poshgirl58]

Charles-P – you’re a brave man, but totally agree with you.

[Author]

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