Monitoring Closely When International Flights Can Resume: Hardeep Singh Puri

Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Hardeep Singh Puri posted a series of tweets on the likelihood of a resumption of international commercial flights soon. Puri said that the government is constantly monitoring the situation and will consider re-commencing international flights as soon as the situation returns to normalcy to some extent. Hinting at the coronavirus outbreak, he also stated that the situation should pose no danger to our citizens.

The Union Minister of Civil Aviation pointed out that we need to factor whether countries we intend to fly to "are open to incoming foreign citizens."

As per 'Unlock 1.0' guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on May 30, international flight operations remain suspended till June 30. The guidelines further stated that the question of resumption of operations will form a part of the discussion in the third phase of Unlock 1.0 for which the MHA did not spell out a timeline.

Media reports stated that international flights could resume in early July. This will, of course, depend on the viability and one of the determining factors will be whether there is an increase in the operations of commercial flights on the domestic sector.

As of now, the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation has allowed commercial airlines to operate on 33% of the overall capacity of flights. State administrations have imposed their own restrictions depending upon local situations in view of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hardeep Singh Puri in a tweet added that "We are also adding several more flights in the third phase of Vande Bharat Mission. These flights will also carry outbound passengers to countries which have no restrictions on taking them in. So people can also avail these flights to return to the countries they wish to go."

The Civil Aviation Minister observed in a tweet that "We have to wait for the domestic operations to touch about 50-60% and consider the behaviour of the virus and its spread to fully lift these restrictions and Lockdown. Till then flights under Vande Bharat Mission are facilitating both inbound and outbound international passengers." International flights take off from major metropolitan cities in the country which have a high caseload of COVID-19. As a result of the coronavirus situation in local states, there are curbs on incoming and outbound flights.

Maharashtra, for example, has restricted the number of flights to 25 departures and 25 arrivals, on account of the security of the coronavirus pandemic in the state.