The union government has initiated the largest and massive evacuation process to return the stranded Indian expats in various countries. The mission is named ‘Vande Bharat mission’. The mission has been officially started on May 7. Indian Navy’s naval ships and flights of public sector airline company Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express are used for this massive mission.
Here are the key things to know about ‘Vande Bharat 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.
• On the first day that is May 7, 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.
• 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.
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