International Flights Latest News Today: As the country is all set to resume the regular international flights at 100% capacity from March 27, the Chennai airport is getting ready to operate international flights in the next 10 days from now. The flight operations will normalise at the Chennai airport nearly after two years with the easing of COVID restrictions.
In an effort to resume the international flights, officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) held a meeting on Wednesday with all stakeholders in the Chennai airport, including airlines, customs, immigration and CISF, the Hindu reported.
“We are handling close to 10,000 passengers and this may go up by another 5,000-10,000 depending on the load factor in flights. We have asked the CISF, customs and immigration to deploy additional staff, close to what they had before the outbreak of the pandemic. The primary concern is to ensure smooth operations and clear the queues in minimum time,” an airport official was quoted as saying by The Hindu.
Even as the regular international flights will restart, however, the full-fledged operations may see a slower return as some airlines may take time to resume flights.
“We will know how many flights each airline will operate in the coming week when the final flight schedule arrives,” the official said.
As per the report, around 20 airlines use the Chennai airport to operate hundreds of flights to many international destinations such as the US, UK, Europe and West Asia.
Giving details, the officials added that the aircraft movement had reached about 60% of the pre-pandemic level.
Earlier this week, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had said that the services of all international passenger flights will resume by March 27. He said this during Question Hour as the Upper House assembled for its second part of the Budget Session after one month’s break.
“All regular international flights will operate in 100 per cent capacity by March 27 as the coronavirus situation in India has improved now,” Scindia said.
Notably, the Centre has had banned all international scheduled flights for a week starting March 23, 2020. The ban stretched for nearly two years in the midst of rising cases of coronavirus. However, special international flights were operating between India and about 35 other countries since July 2020 under the air bubble.
