DOMESTIC OPS RESUME: 11 flights with 732 passengers reach twin cities

26/05/2020

JAMMU/SRINAGAR, May 25: Eleven flights with 732 passengers reached the twin airports at Jammu and Srinagar on Monday, officials said, as domestic air travel resumed after a two-month break due to the coronavirus.
While six domestic flights carrying about 562 passengers, who were stranded in different parts of the country, landed at the Srinagar International Airport, five flights landed at the Jammu airport with 170 stranded people, an official spokesman said.
The arrival started with the landing of an Air Asia flight at the Srinagar Airport at 7:25 am. All passengers who arrived at the airport were thoroughly screened for COVID-19 and their samples taken, he said.
The first flight at the Jammu airport arrived at 8:50 am with 31 passengers, followed by four more at their scheduled times subsequently, marking the resumption of the flight operations, the spokesman said.
All scheduled commercial passenger flights have been suspended since March 25 when the government imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
It was announced last Thursday that one-third of pre-lockdown domestic flights will operate from Monday. International scheduled commercial passenger flights remain suspended.
The spokesman said the government had made elaborate arrangements for the arrival, screening, sampling and dispatch of passengers.
The airport has been equipped to receive the passengers strictly following the procedures and guidelines prescribed by the Union Ministries of Civil Aviation and the Health and Family Welfare, the spokesman said.
He said the government has issued additional instructions, modifications and exemptions to the procedure prescribed in the earlier circulars regarding 100 percent RT-PCR testing of all incoming passengers by train or air and quarantine procedure to be followed.
As per the modified quarantine procedure, the spokesman said, pregnant women in the last trimester with a doctor's certificate of pregnancy; cancer patients on chemotherapy; chronically ill patients discharged from a hospital after a surgical procedure; dialysis patients with a doctor's certificate of being on dialysis would be sampled on arrival for RTPCR testing and sent to Home quarantine for 14 days; and if their test result is positive, they will be brought to a COVID hospital for recovery and treatment.
Mothers with infant below one year; children below 10 years travelling alone without a family member; government of India personnel on bona fide government duty and passengers/travellers with an RTPCR test negative certificate from a ICMR approved laboratory/testing facility, not older than two days (48 hours) before the arrival date arriving by air, rail or any other means from outside the UT to J&K would also be sent to home quarantine, he said.
Meanwhile, the spokesman said the Jammu and Kashmir administration has evacuated 93,380 stranded local residents from various parts of the country so far. They included 66,694 by buses through Lakhanpur corridor and 26,034 by 32 COVID special trains.
A total of 16,615 outbound migrant workers, stranded in various districts of Jammu and Kashmir, have also been sent back to their home states and UTs through Shramik special trains from Katra since May 19 till date, the spokesman said.

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