US-Saudi flights to resume despite Trump's ban on international travel

Daily flights from the US to Saudi Arabia will resume this week as the kingdom continues evacuating its citizens.

2 min read

06 May, 2020

Daily flights from the US to Saudi Arabia will resume this week [Getty]

Flights from the US to Saudi Arabia will resume on a daily basis this week, the Saudi embassy in Washington announced on Wednesday, after disruptions to traffic caused by the coronavirus lockdown.

The move comes despite travel restrictions put in place by the Trump administration to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Last month, President Donald Trump announced that immigration to the US would be suspended for 60 days in order to "protect American workers".

The US is in the grips of one of the world's worst coronavirus crises with 1,243,475 recorded cases and 72,828 deaths, as of Wednesday.

Despite this, Saudi Ambassador Princess Rima Bint Bandar announced the resumption of flights in a conference call with members of the Saudi embassy.

Daily flights to Riyadh and Jeddah will take off from a number of US cities. Priority will be given to citizens with more compelling reasons for travel, according to the Saudi Gazette.

Read also: 'You're not welcome': Trump's new immigration ban sows anxiety and confusion in the US

The move comes as Saudi Arabia begins to implement the second phase of its evacuation of Saudi nationals from the US amid the coronavirus pandemic. The second phase includes the repatriation of foreign scholarship students and Saudi residents of the US.

According to the Saudi embassy, around 3,000 Saudis who were considered to be in a critical or emergency situation have already been returned from the US.

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