Air India may open bookings for 400 international Services to 40 countries

Air India is about to start bookings for about 400 international services to 40 countries. A Times Now report said. It is as part of Vande bharat mission which has been launched to repatriate Indians who stuck in different countries .The services may include neighborhood like Myanmar, Mauritius, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives apart from the countries where huge numbers of Indian citizens are living, like the Gulf, Southeast Asia, Britain and the USA.

However,Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday said that upwards of 20 thousand Indian citizens have been brought back to the country under the Vande Bharat mission so far and the number will rise further in the coming days.

AirIndia is also likely to start services to Russia, central Asia and some former Soviet Union countries, principally Ukraine but also Belarus, Georgia and Armenia.There will be a large number of flights from Moscow, Kiev, and also central Asian countries like  Kirghizstan, mostly to repatriate Indian students.  The report said.

There will be flights to countries where Air India hasn’t filed earlier as part of the mission, or not gone beyond a flight or two. These include New Zealand, Kenya, Sweden, Spain, Egypt, Finland, Japan and Tajikistan.

The countries where there are still a significant number of Indians like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, as well as the USA, Britain, Canada and Australia, flights have also included in the list to travel. In the case of the USA, there will be flights from New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Besides Heathrow, Birmingham will be used, and in Canada and Australia, cities like Vancouver and Toronto and Melbourne and Sydney, respectively. This is to make sure that passengers are not inconvenienced. The report said.

What has been done is the system of feeder flights. This means that passengers will not just be dropped off in Mumbai or Delhi, but moved to places closer to where they are from, like Cochin, Vijayawada, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Srinagar, Kannur and Lucknow. Flights will also originate from Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Report added.

Earlier there were reports that more flights will start operations from May 17-28 as part of the Vande Bharat Mission-II to fly back Indians stranded abroad. Some countries are conditionally allowing people to fly from India on the flights going there to bring home stranded Indians.