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Thermal scanning for passengers, PPE kits for airline staff as domestic air services resume
The flights to Mumbai and Patna were among the first to take off on Monday morning. Both the flights are operated by private carrier IndiGo.
Domestic air travel resumed in the country on Monday, after a gap of two months and the first flyers experienced the revised protocol of entering the airport at Delhi.
Those who took first flights included paramilitary personnel, army men, students and migrants, who failed to book a ticket on special trains being run by the railways, reported news agency PTI.
Aamir Afzal, a mechanical engineer from Patna, who had come to Delhi on an official visit on March 23, was among those who took the flights to celebrate Eid with family and friends.
“I had been staying in a hotel in Mahipalpur with my co-worker. The hotel charged us ₹900 per day. We could not get a confirmed ticket on a train back home,” he told PTI.
Many said they shelled out more to reach the airport as there were limited public transport options available.
The air travel was stopped and all flights grounded since March 25 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The flights to Mumbai and Patna were among the first to take off on Monday morning. Both the flights are operated by private carrier IndiGo.
The airline staff members, who reached the Delhi airport early on Monday, said they are worried but work comes first. “We are a little worried but work comes first. We will get PPE kits from the airline,” said Amandeep Kaur, a flight attendant.
Passengers were screened using a thermometre gun at Delhi airport before boarding Vistara flight to Bhubaneswar (Odisha). The food & beverage (F&B) and retail outlets, which were closed for the past 63 days, opened at Terminal 3 of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport.
The flight services resumed after a day of long and hard negotiations between the Centre and the states on Sunday. All states finally agreed to accept at least some flights but announced varied quarantine and self-isolation rules for arriving passengers to address misgivings about infections being brought in from other cities.
Instead of following the national guidelines issued by the Union government for all departing and disembarking passengers, many of the states chose to set their own rules: Karnataka, for instance, requires mandatory institutional quarantine for passengers from worst-affected states, while Punjab and Meghalaya have made a swab test mandatory for arrivals.
Some other states, such as Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh, said that only state residents will be allowed to enter the city from the airports.
Three states - Maharashtra, West bengal and Tamil Nadu - urged the Centre to reconsider the decision to allow domestic flight operations to resume as it could lead to a spike in infections. On Sunday, the ministry held several discussions with these states and airline representatives.
On Sunday evening, the ministry announced that some 50 flights will operate from Mumbai.
Flights to and from West Bengal will resume on May 28. After initially seeking time till May 31, Tamil Nadu came on board with the Union government’s plan early on Sunday.
