Air India flight carrying 182 stranded Indians from Sharjah arrives in Lucknow

An Air India flight with 182 Indians from Sharjah in United Arab Emirates arrived in Luckw on Saturday evening, officials said. This is first flight reaching Luckw with Indians stuck abro due to coronavirus-triggered lockdown.

"An Air India flight IX184 arrived in Luckw from Sharjah on Saturday at around 9.00 pm. tentative number of passengers arriving in Luckw is over 180. This is first flight arriving in Luckw during lockdown bringing back Indians stranded abro due to coronavirus-induced lockdown," Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport Director AK Sharma told PTI.

passengers were screened at airport and n sent to quarantine.

Luckw DM Abhishek Prakash told PTI, " passengers who have arrived today have been placed under paid quarantine in Luckw. We have identified ESI Hospital (a government hospital in Sarojininagar area of Luckw), and any passenger found symptomatic will be mitted to that hospital. Rest of those will book paid quarantine facility after arrival, and spend next 14 days re."

Senior officials of police and district ministration were present at airport when flight landed.

Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Sarojininagar Praful Tripathi, who was present at airport, said 182 passengers arrived on Saturday evening.

Indian government h on Monday anunced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abro from May 7.

government also said that Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abro due to lockdown.

India imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb spre of coronavirus in country, grounding all international flights since mid-March.

Under repatriation plan, government will be facilitating return of Indian nationals stranded abro on compelling grounds in a phased manner.

evacuation flights are expected to land at 14 airports across India including Delhi (10 flights), Hyderab and Kochi nine each, Kozhikode (four), Trivandrum (one), Kannur (one), Chennai (nine), Trichy (one), Ahmab (five), Mumbai (four), Srinagar (three), Bengaluru (four), Luckw (one) and Amritsar (one).

Kerala tops list of state-wise break-up of repatriation requests with 25,246, followed by 6,617 from Tamil Nu and 4,341 from Maharashtra. A total of 3,715 people from Uttar Presh requested for evacuation, 3,320 from Rajasthan, 2,796 from Telangana and, 2,786 from Karnataka, sources said.