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Schedule, flights, evacuation process: All you need you know about Vande Bharat mission
India has launched a massive evacuation operation to bring back Indians stranded in different parts of the world due to the coronavirus pandemic.
National carrier Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express are all set to embark upon one of the world’s largest evacuation operations on Thursday.
These flights under India’s massive ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ are being organised to bring back Indian stranded in various countries due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are the key things to know about India’s repatriation mission:
• Air India and Air India Express will operate to 64 flights in seven days to bring back 14,800 stranded Indians from 12 countries. The airlines have readied the aircraft type and taken care of all other logistical aspects to embark on this mission.
• The Press Information Burea shared the plan for the first day, where it said that 2,300 people will be brought back. The highest number of passengers - 300 - are coming back from the United States, followed by 250 each from the UK, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and 200 each from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, Doha and Dhaka.
• Air India will operate the Delhi-Singapore flight on Thursday around 11 pm on Thursday from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport. The flight will come back to Delhi at 7 am on Friday morning. Similarly, Air India Express will operate Cochin-Abu Dhabi-Cochin and Kozhikode-Dubai-Kozhikode services.
• Besides one-way ferry service, Air India invited passengers, who qualify under the government’s new international travel norms to apply for passage from India to various destinations the airline will send its aircraft to conduct evacuation flights. Overall, more than 190,000 Indian nationals, who would have to pay a one-way ferry service charge, are expected to be brought back in the airlift operation.
• On Tuesday, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs stated that a person who has an OCI card, or held the citizenship of a foreign country, or held a valid visa of more than one year of that country, or had the green card of that country, can travel on the repatriation flight leaving India under the Vande Bharat mission.
• This is not the first time that Air India is carrying out such mission. Since February this year, Air India has been conducting various repatriation flights to virus-affected cities like Wuhan in China and Rome in Italy to bring back Indian nationals. It has also been instrumental in repatriating foreigners to Israel, UK and Germany.
What happened 30 year ago:
Three decades ago, Air India led a group of airlines which included Indian Airlines and Aeroflot as well as Indian Air Force to rescue an estimated 111,711 Indians from the Gulf, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in the year 1990.
The 59-day operation involved 488 flights and was conducted before the first Gulf war. This time, the exercise will encompass flights to the US in the West to Philippines in the East.
