Flight info

Tears Of Relief At Arrival And Departure

First Air India Flight From Singapore Carrying 234 Indian Passengers Lands

Pankhuri.Yadav@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:  09.05.2020

At 12.05pm on Friday, Air India flight AI-381 made a smooth landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport. Though half an hour late in arriving, the 234 passengers from Singapore were delighted to step on home soil after two months of anxiety and uncertainty. Their relatives weren’t allowed to meet them, and yet the relief of being back in India made them grin, wave their hands and give the thumbs up sign.

It was only around 3pm that the scrutiny of the passengers got over. The first lot of the stranded Indians being brought home from abroad under the Vande Bharat Mission, the returnees had their documents inspected and then underwent medical checks to ascertain their Covid status. Only after this three-hour exercise did they board the buses organised to take them into quarantine at hotels in Aerocity, Dwarka and south Delhi. Travellers from the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh were driven there in other buses.

In a tweet, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal welcomed the passengers and assured them that all arrangements had been made for all Indians arriving in Delhi from other countries.

Till Friday, the number of coronavirus cases in Singapore had logged 21,707, with 20 deaths. So, the arriving Indians will spend 14 days in paid quarantine in the designated hotels before they can be reunited with their families at home. “The residents of Delhi will stay in 8-10 hotels that have been readied in New Delhi, south and southeast Delhi as well as at Aerocity,” said a government official.

Nearly 20 buses, including some from UP, Haryana and Punjab, were deployed at IGIA to ferry the people to the quarantine facilities. As per the standard operating procedures for dealing with Indians arriving at IGIA, resident commissioners and nodal officers of other states will take care of the transport and quarantine of their respective residents.

Medical teams comprising staff from the municipal bodies and Rao Tularam Memorial Hospital, Jaffar Kalan, screened the arrivals from Singapore, while taking strict precautionary measures to avoid any possible infection.

The spokesperson of IGIA operator Delhi International Airport Limited said the SOP for handling passengers on repatriation flights envisaged social distancing during boarding and disembarking. “The airlines, their ground handlers, DIAL staff, immigrations, CISF and Customs will be supporting the Airport Health Organisation (APHO) and Delhi government in the operations,” the spokesperson said.

On Thursday at 11.30pm, the first Vande Bharat Mission flight had left for Singapore empty from Delhi. In the other 64 planned flights, 14 of them landing at IGIA, Air India will not only be bringing back Indians stranded abroad due to the Covid crisis, but will also fly people out to the US, UK and Singapore, bookings for which are now open. During the weeklong mission till May 13, there will be flights to locations like Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and the United Kingdom. Indians from other countries such as Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the US will also be flown home over the next seven days.