Air India to start evacuation flights from Thursday

BENGALURU: National carrier Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express will fly the first few repatriation flights on Thursday to bring back Indians stranded in 16 countries, said Director General of Civil Aviation Arun Kumar. The operation was scheduled to begin on Wednesday, but was delayed by a day as Covid-19 tests had to be conducted on all the crew members, he said. An airline source said four flights will be operated on May 7 — New Delhi to San Francisco, Kochi to Abu Dhabi, Delhi to Singapore and Calicut to Dubai. “Hopefully, we will run all of them from Thursday”, he added sounding cautious.

In a span of one week, Air India planned to bring back a total of 14,800 Indians from 12 countries on 64 flights, according to the flight plan released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation on Tuesday. The release of the plan led to a mad rush to register on the Civil Aviation ministry website, resulting in it crashing for a good part of the day on Wednesday.