The fourth evacuation flight to Karnataka landed in this tech city from Singapore, with 149 returnees, said an official on Wednesday.
“The Airbus A320-251N of Air-India (AI 1379) landed at the city international airport at 9.51 p.m., with 149 passengers from Singapore,” the official told IANS here.
The foreign returnees were stranded overseas for about 50 days due to the suspension of international air services by the government since March 23 and extended lockdown since March 25 to contain the coronavirus spread across the country.
“The passengers to the southern state included women, senior citizens, students, tourists and professionals, who were held up in Singapore and South East Asia during the lockdown, as no overseas and domestic commercial flights were operated since March 23,” said the official.
The flight was over two hours behind scheduled arrival of 7.45 p.m. due to delayed departure from Changi airport in Singapore.
The passengers were received by the state health department and the state-run A-I officials in the arrival terminal.
The returnees were given new masks to wear and sanitizer to wash their hands and told to maintain social distancing till they exit the airport.
“As per the standard operating procedure and protocols to be observed by all foreign returnees, the passengers were screened and tested to ensure they were asymptomatic and free from the Covid-19 virus,” a state official told IANS.
After completing the formalities, the passengers were ferried in state-run chartered buses in batches for the mandatory 14-day quarantine in star hotels booked for them in the city.
Passengers who did not have an Indian mobile connection were given a new sim card by the local operators and got it activated to download the mandatory quarantine app — the Aaroygya Sethu app and Apthamitra app before leaving the airport.
As part of the government’s evacuation programme ‘Vande Bharat Mission’, two more repatriation flights are due to land in Bengaluru from San Francisco and another from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia by May 15.
Of the 691 returnees to the state till date, 514 landed in Bengaluru in three flights since Monday and 177 in Mangaluru port city, about 360 km away, in the fourth flight on Tuesday.
The first evacuation flight to Karnataka from London landed in Bengaluru on early Monday, with 326 returnees, including three infants.
The second evacuation flight to the southern state was an Air-India Express that landed in Bengaluru on Tuesday night from Singapore, with 42 passengers.
The third repatriation flight to the state landed at Mangaluru on the west coast of the state from Dubai on Tuesday night, with 177 passengers, including 88 men, 84 women, 5 children and 2 infants.
