Dubai/ Bahrain: On the fifth day of India's repatriation mission, Vande Bharat, two Air India flights brought 361 Keralites from United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on Monday.
The first flight from Dubai to Kochi ferried 177 passengers, while the second flight from Manama, Bahrain's capital, brought home 184 persons, including 21 pregnant women and four children.
London flight lands in Bengaluru
As many as 326 people stuck in London due to the COVID-19 lockdown arrived at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru in the early hours of Monday.
After their arrival by an Air India evacuation flight at 4:45 am, a team of corona warriors checked the passengers' health condition before letting them go to the designated quarantine centres
All the 326 passengers were found to be asymptomatic and put up in hotels as chosen by them, a senior Karnataka government official said.
Around 2,000 people are expected to reach Kerala in the first five days on board 13 flights, official sources said. More than 1,90,000 Indian nationals, who would have to pay a one-way ferry service charge, are expected to be brought back. The international airports at Kannur, Kozhikode, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram will handle the arrivals. Besides the four destinations in Kerala, the national carrier would be operating services to Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Tiruchirapalli. Air India has also 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.
Tuesday's flights
On Tuesday, the Doha-Thiruvananthapuram flight, which was cancelled on Sunday, will bring home stranded passengers from Qatar. The flight was cancelled as it did not get landing permission in Doha. The flight, which will depart Doha at 9pm on Tuesday. is expected to land at Thiruvananthapuram at 12.40am (Wednesday).
Another flight from Dubai with 180 passengers will land at Kannur International Airport at 7.10pm on Tuesday.
