HYDERABAD:
An Air India flight with 331 passengers from Britain landed at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport here early Tuesday. It later took off with another 87 passengers for Delhi, from where they will be airlifted to the US.
Air India flight AI 1839, a Boeing 773 aircraft, arrived via Delhi at the Hyderabad airport at 2.21 am, an airport spokesman said. The same aircraft departed at 5.31 am with 87 US-bound passengers from Hyderabad to Delhi.
The flight from Britain was the fourth to land in Hyderabad under ‘Vande Bharat Mission’, the biggest-ever exercise to bring home Indians stranded in various countries due to Covid-19 lockdown. After the completion of immigration and other formalities, the passengers were transported to designated locations in the city for mandatory 14-day quarantine as per the rules framed by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Telangana government in coordination with the Ministry of External Affairs, various central agencies and the airport authorities made special arrangements to handle the arrivals as per the Standard Operating Protocol issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, airport sources said. All passengers and aircraft crew were brought out from the aircraft in batches of 20-25. Each passenger was screened by the thermal cameras positioned at the aerobridge exit by airport health officials prior to completion of immigration formalities.
Every baggage was sanitized by a disinfection tunnel integrated to the baggage belt. Glass shields were provided at each manned immigration counter to avoid any personal contact between the passengers and immigration officers.
The Hyderabad airport has so far handled four evacuation flights from the US, the UK, Kuwait and the UAE that evacuated over 750 Indian citizens stranded off-shore. Air India flight from Abu Dhabi with 170 evacuees had landed on Monday night while the one from the US (San Francisco) via Mumbai arrived on Monday morning with 118 passengers.
The first flight with 163 evacuees from Kuwait had reached here on Saturday. A total of seven evacuation flights are scheduled to land at Hyderabad Airport, bringing 2,350 stranded Indians from six countries.
The airport has also handled 12 international outgoing flights with around 1,000 foreigners who were sent to the UK, the UAE, the US, Kenya and Germany.
