An Air India evacuation flight from San Francisco with 118 passengers on board landed at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad on Monday.
Vande Bharat evacuation flight AI 1617 from US (San Francisco) to Mumbai and Hyderabad landed at 9.22 am, an airport spokesman said. Passengers who landed include natives of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
This is a part of Vande Bharat Mission, which is being touted as the biggest-ever evacuation of Indian citizens stranded in various countries due to COVID-19 lockdown.
To facilitate the arriving passengers and aircraft crew, the airport has kept the international arrivals and the entire stretch right from aerobridge to arrivals ramp fully sanitised and fumigated. The airport also enforced physical distancing among passengers right from the aerobridge to the terminal.
Each passenger or crew member was screened by thermal cameras positioned at the aerobridge exit under supervision of the Airport Health officials (APHO) as per the directives of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare prior to Immigration formalities.
After the completion of immigration and other formalities, the passengers will be transported to designated locations in the city for a mandatory 14-day quarantine period 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.
This is the second flight to land in Hyderabad. The first with 163 evacuees from Kuwait had reached on Saturday. A third evacuation flight, from Abu Dhabi, is scheduled to reach Hyderabad at around 9.30 pm on Monday.
A total of seven evacuation flights are scheduled to land at Hyderabad Airport. An official of the Telangana government said that 2,350 stranded Indians from six countries will be reaching Hyderabad.
Under the 'Vande Bharat Mission' which began on May 7, the government of India is operating 64 flights till May 13 to bring home nearly 14,800 nationals stranded abroad.
IANS and PTI inputs