KOCHI/NEW DELHI:
Airports
were gotten ready to get Indian nationals stranded abroad due to the coronavirus lockdown with Air India’s repatriation flight from Abu Dhabi to Kochi on Thursday set to start the country’s biggest evacuation exercise by air and sea.
The AI’s non-scheduled industrial flight with around 200
passengers
on board is anticipated to land at the Kochi International airport in
Kerala
at 9.45 pm, as logistical plans and rigorous health protocols were put in place at several airports including in Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi and Mumbai.
Jishnu, a passenger from Abu Dhabi who was among those in the very first lot to fly out of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was elated that he would be able to return to his home state.
” I am really happy to have actually got the ticket. I was notified the other day that I might take a trip”, he told a tv channel on Wednesday.
More on Covid-19
From the Gulf nations to Malaysia and the UK to the US, the multi-agency operation christened ‘Vande Bharat Objective’ will see the state-owned AI run 64 flights till May 13 in the first stage to ferry around 15,000 Indian nationals from 12 countries.
Personal Indian airline companies may sign up with the repatriation effort after May13
As numerous as 10 flights are planned to be operated on the very first day from different locations abroad. Kochi, the other cities where the flights are scheduled to land on Thursday are Kozhikode( Kerala), Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Srinagar. Just as