UK announces 12 more chartered flights to evacuate its citizens from India amid Covid

Following up on its mission to evacuate British nationals stranded in India amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Kingdom on Friday announced 12 additional charter flights. This announcement by the British High Commission comes shortly after it announced its first batch of 7 charter flights back on April 6 to evacuate British nationals from Delhi, Mumbai, and Goa.  These 19 flights will evacuate a total of 5000 people from India. As of April 6, there were over 35,000 British Nationals stranded in India. Meanwhile, the first charter flight from India reached London Stanstead on Thursday morning with 317 British nationals on board from Goa.

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"We are doing all we can to get thousands of British travellers in India home. This is a huge and complex operation which also involves working with the Indian Government to enable people to move within India to get on these flights," said UK Minister of State for South Asia and the Commonwealth, Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon

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Schedule of flights

The embassy also announced the schedule of 12 flights. Three of the 12 flights will take off from Amritsar on April 13, 17 and 19. Two flights are scheduled to embark from Ahmedabad on April 13, 15 and two from Goa on April 14, 16.One flight each will take off from Goa, Thiruvananthapuram Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai during the time period from April 15 to 20. "Over 300 people arrived from Goa on Thursday morning, 1,400 more will arrive over the Easter weekend and these 12 flights next week will bring back thousands more," added the UK Minister. 

(With Agency Inputs)

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