The first of the 64 Air India and Air India Express flights bringing back stranded Indians will arrive in Kerala from the Gulf with 354 people, including 11 pregnant women and a pair of twins.
The Air India Express flight to Kochi will take off from Abu Dhabi at 4.15 pm and reach its destination at 9.40 pm, while the other to Kozhikode is scheduled to leave Dubai at 5pm and arrive at 10.40 pm, officials said.
No flights to Calcutta have been slotted till now. This means that anyone looking to return to the city will have to be ready to go into quarantine for 14 days in the destination where the Air India flight lands.
The first batch of passengers travelling by Air India will reach New Delhi from Singapore on May 8, according to the airline’s evacuation schedule. Flight AI-381 from Singapore will reach New Delhi at 11.35am on Friday.
The national carrier will operate two flights from Riyadh and Dhaka on Friday, which will land at Calicut and New Delhi, respectively. The flight from Singapore has the capacity to carry 250 passengers, an Air India official said.
Most of the Air India flights will land in Delhi and Mumbai with some heading for Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore.
Civil aviation ministry officials said the initial evacuation plan has been drawn up keeping the demand of the stranded passengers in mind.
Meanwhile, Air India has opened bookings for eligible foreign nationals and valid visa holders of the UK, the US and Singapore for outbound repatriation flights between May 7 and May 14.
Aviation loss
Mumbai: Rating agencies estimate the nationwide lockdown to cause losses of up to Rs 17,000 crore for domestic airlines. In a report, Crisil said the aviation industry was expected to crash-land this fiscal with a massive revenue loss of Rs 24,000-25,000 crore. It added that airlines will be the worst-affected segment, contributing more than 70 per cent to the losses.
Airport operators are likely to suffer losses worth Rs 5,000-5,500 crore and airport retailers will see a hit of Rs 1,700-1,800 crore, said Crisil’s Jagannarayan Padmanabhan.