Late last week, India announced the reopening of international flights and a lapse of the travel bubble arrangements they had been signing up with various countries effective December 15, 2021. Ominously, this announcement came on the same day as the World Health Organisation took up a discussion on Omicron, the new variant of the SARS-CoV-2.

India will review international reopening

As a recap, India had announced that, apart from certain countries at risk in India’s assessment, there will be a complete resumption of flights from the rest of the world and a graded resumption from these at-risk countries effective December 15, 2021.

However, as various other countries started to close their doors, especially to the Southern part of Africa, India might also be looking at some measures in light of the new variant. In a tweet put out by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the nodal ministry for reviewing Covid-19 related measures in India, it mentioned that “decision on effective date of resumption of scheduled commercial international passengers service, to be reviewed, as per evolving global scenario.”

Decision on effective date of resumption of scheduled commercial international passengers service, to be reviewed, as per evolving global scenario.

— Spokesperson, Ministry of Home Affairs (@PIBHomeAffairs) November 28, 2021

This might mean that the Government of India might be having a rethink on allowing the resumption of international flights. We should hear more this week about this if something is in the works.

India has postponed reopening of international commercial flights

As per a new circular from the DGCA, India’s regulator for aviation, it seems that the new date for resumption of scheduled commercial aviation will be notified in due course, which gives us a sign that this won’t be going forth on December 15, 2021 as per the earlier announcement.

Bottomline

India has postponed, for now, the resumption of full commercial flights from India to most countries. This would mean, that the air bubbles will remain intact for now and those flights will operate as scheduled. However, other flights will be cancelled, if they ever went up on sale.

What do you make of India’s postponement of the reopening of International flights?

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