First flight with 181 returning Indians Lands In Kochi From Abu Dhabi

Mangalore Today News Network

Thiruvananthapuram, May 07, 2020: A special flight from Abu Dhabi with 177 Indians including 49 pregnant women landed in Kochi on Thursday as part of India’s massive operation to bring back some of the hundreds of thousands of citizens stuck abroad due to coronavirus restrictions with passenger jets and naval ships.

The first Air India Express flight took off at 5.07 pm (local time). Few minutes later, a Dubai-Kozhikode flight took off at 5:46 pm (local time) as part of the massive repatriation exercise named ’’Vande Bharat Mission’’, NDTV reported.

 

There are no suspected COVID-19 cases among the first batch of 354 passengers being flown back on Thursday.

The central government had banned all incoming international flights in late March as it imposed one of the world’s strictest virus lockdowns, leaving vast numbers of workers and students stranded.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7. The government also said that Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad due to the lockdown.

Short-listing the first passengers from among a database of more than 2 lakh applicants, who include around 6,500 pregnant women, has been a mammoth task which posed several challenges for the missions, Neeraj Agrawal, Consul, Press, Information and Culture at the Indian Consulate in Dubai told the Gulf News.

The Indian missions in the UAE finalised the list of passengers, who were chosen based on the compelling reasons they submitted while registering their names.