At the speed at which Air India has been operating repatriation flights from/to Europe, they were recently ruffling too many feathers. Air India, which was the sole operator of Vande Bharat flights till a while back, was asked to offload passengers flying from Delhi to Paris because the authorisation was only to repatriate passengers from Paris to India.

The Indian borders are closed till July 31, 2020, for now so regular commercial flights are not possible at the moment from India for any airline. Which means the only way to operate to India is via cargo flights or via charters. A third way is to do it via repatriation flights. KLM and Air France have been operating some flights for a while now.

Last week, India granted permission to KLM and Air France for operating 21 flights from India to Europe till the end of July 2020. After that Air India managed to launch more flights to France. Apparently, a discussion with the UK is ongoing as well at the moment.

United Kingdom

Air India will operate three additional flights from India to the United Kingdom from July 26 – 30, 2020.

• July 26, 2020: AI131 Mumbai – London Heathrow
• July 28, 2020: AI161 Delhi – London Heathrow
• July 30, 2020: AI161 Delhi – London Heathrow

Air India will operate three additional flights from London Heathrow to India from July 26 – 30, 2020 as well.

Arrival and departure flights are allowed and no restriction on passenger movement. However, when you arrive in the UK, you will have to enable UK Contact Tracing and undergo 14 days of isolation. To travel back to India you need to register here before your flight is booked.  To fly into India, you need to be an Indian national or an OCI Cardholder fulfilling certain requirements.

Booking these flights

These flights will be put up for sale by Air India on their own website today at 8 PM India time (3:30 PM Germany/France). You can also book these tickets via Air India ticketing offices, and now, officially, with Travel Agents. This should mean the flights would also be available on OTAs such as MakeMyTrip and so on.

---

Liked our articles and our efforts? Please pay an amount you are comfortable with; an amount you believe is the fair price for the content you have consumed. Please enter an amount in the box below and click on the button to pay; you can use Netbanking, Debit/Credit Cards, UPI, QR codes, or any Wallet to pay. Every contribution helps cover the cost of the content generated for your benefit.

(Important: to receive confirmation and details of your transaction, please enter a valid email address in the pop-up form that will appear after you click the ‘Pay Now’ button. For international transactions, use PayPal.)

We are not putting our articles behind any paywall where you are asked to pay before you read an article. We are asking you to pay after you have read the article if you are satisfied with the quality and our efforts.