After a wait of over 40 days, around 360 Indians landed in Chennai in the wee hours of Saturday as a part of India’s evacuation process from Dubai. The operation, named ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ is aimed at evacuating Indians stranded abroad due to the suspension of airline operations between the countries.
Two Air India Express flights -- IX 612 and IX 540 -- took off from Dubai on Friday night and landed in Chennai International Airport at 1 am and 1.55 am on Saturday. IX 612 had a total of 182 passengers which included 151 men, 28 women and three children. Flight IX 540 had 177 passengers consisting of 138 men and 39 women. Extensive arrangements were made to screen the incoming passengers at the airport and take them to designated quarantine centers in the city.
These are the first passenger flights to land in Chennai after the government of India resumed international flight operations since May 7 to bring back stranded Indians from across the world.
On May 5, an Air Asia flight had landed in Chennai bringing stranded passengers from Bangkok as a special arrangement by the two embassies.
On Friday, two flights from the Middle East carrying 335 passengers had landed in Kerala under the Vande Bharat Mission. An Air India flight from Riyadh had brought in 153 passengers including pregnant women and infants to Kozhikode airport while another Air India Express flight from Bahrain landed at Kochi International Airport on Friday night with 177 passengers. Two Air India flights had landed in Kerala with Indians from Abu Dhabi and Dubai on Thursday.
A ship belonging to the Indian Navy, INS Jalashwa, is also on its way to Kochi from Male in Maldives, carrying 698 Indian nationals who were stranded in the island country.
The first phase of Vande Bharat Mission will see the operation of 64 repatriation flights between May 7 and 14 and will be aided by Indian Navy to bring back thousands of Indian citizens stranded abroad amid the global lockdown prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. An estimated number of 5,000 Indian nationals have been enlisted to be evacuated from 12 countries under this massive repatriation mission.