Air India Start International Flights Booking For 7 Places From 5th June

It’s a good news. After resuming the domestic flights, the Aviation Ministry has given green flag to some international flights. Air India will begin the international flights bookings from 5 pm on June 5 i.e., today! However, these flights will be special and will be scheduled for selected places.

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As per the reports, Air India will begin its operations for international flights under Vande Bharat Mission’s third phase. In this mission, the government is trying to ferry stranded passengers to several places in the US between June 9 and June 30.

List of International Flights

For now, Air India will fly 75 special international flights to the following destinations:

1. New York
2. Newark
3. Washington
4. Chicago
5. San Francisco
6. Toronto
7. Vancouver

The Union Civil Aviation Ministry Har deep Singh Puri also tweeted about the same.

He also added that normal international flights will begin only when the situations turns normal. He said, “Right now most of our metro cities are under some form of restrictions due to which people from other cities cannot travel to catch flights and we also have a requirement for mandatory quarantine on arrival. We have to wait for the domestic operations to touch about 50-60 per cent 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,”

The Price Controversy

After Air India made the announcement, many people claimed that the company is charging too much for the flights.

However, Hardeep Singh Puri put an end to this rumour. He offered a comparison chart between Air India international flights under Vande Bharat Mission and other evacuation flights. With the help of the chart, he claimed that Air India is charging less than other countries’ evacuation flights.

He also took to twitter to clear the issue:

“Economy fare paid by travellers for evacuation flights organised by the concerned (US) Embassy from India was Rs 3.00 lakhs for Houston. Indians pay Rs 1.03 lakh on India-US sector (flights) under the Vande Bharat mission which is nearly one third,” Mr Puri mentioned.

Vande Bharat Mission

Vande Bharat Mission aims to bring back Indian who are stuck abroad. Under this mission, Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express started its international flights from May 7. Till now, the company has operated around 423 inbound international flights under the mission, bringing 58,867 Indians back in first and second phase.

While the bookings for the third phase will start from today, reports say that normal international flights operations will begin after July.

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