As many as arrival and departure of 80 flights at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International airport have been cancelled, officials said.
Earlier, the flight schedule was made for all airports including West Bengal (flight operations from May 28), Maharashtra (25 takeoffs and 25landings every day) and Chennai (incoming passenger flights restricted to 25).
With the resumption of domestic flight operations, Vistara Airlines on Monday started its operation with the first flight to Bhubaneswar from the national capital.Vistara Air UK-785 departed for Bhubaneswar with 95 passengers at 6:50 am on Monday. All passengers were screened before boarding the flight at Delhi's IGI airport.
"We're strictly following the government's guidelines to ensure safety against COVID19. Today has been a different experience as we're not used to wearing protective gear over our uniforms. All passengers followed the guidelines," a flight attendant on Vistara's Delhi-Bhubaneswar flight said. Passengers deboarding were seen wearing face shields as a precautionary measure against COVID-19.
Passengers on Monday arrived at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport as domestic flight operation resumes in the country amid the nationwide lockdown.
But passengers complained about some flights got cancelled without prior notice. A passenger at the airport told news agency ANI that her Air India flight to Delhi today has been cancelled without prior notice.
On the first day of resumption of domestic passenger flight operations in the country, there have been 17 departures and five arrivals at Bengaluru's Kempegowda International airport on Monday till 9 am.
Nine flights have also been cancelled.
A mother who came to receive her son at Kempegowda International Airport said, "My five-year-old son Vihaan Sharma has travelled alone from Delhi, he has come back to Bengaluru after three months."
Passengers of Air India Bengaluru-Hyderabad flight said that their flight was cancelled, without prior notice from the airline. "Only when our boarding passes were scanned at the airport entry we were told that boarding has been cancelled. We don't know what to do now," said one of the passengers.
The Central government has announced the resumption of domestic flight operations from today in a phased manner.
Well, there is no place like home. And to return home, one wouldn’t mind travelling for nearly five days covering almost five states, that too in a truck. And this story of a man who travelled in a truck amid these times will surely give you chills. The fear of catching coronavirus and the scorching heat throughout the 2,500 km journey obstructed Amritpal Khalsa's journey, but failed to stop him with the determination he had to return to his home in Ulhasnagar from Gangtok, Sikkim.
Khalsa, an advocate by profession, was stranded in Gangtok for more than two months and wanted to return to his house as he was exhausted living alone in a room, which he had rented just a few hours after the Prime Minister declared a nation-wide lockdown in March. He had been there to appear in one of his cases pending before the Sikkim High Court.
