Air India announces eight evacuation flights between India and Australia

Air India has announced eight evacuation flights between India and Australia under the Vande Bharat Mission. The flights will be operated from July 1 to July 14. Bookings will begin on June 28 from 12 PM — only on the Air India website.

The national carrier will operate four flights each to Melbourne and Sydney.

Since May, Air India has carried out repatriation flights under the Vande Bharat Mission. Recently,  the US, France and the UAE governments raised objections to these flights saying that India was not allowing these countries to carry out their own repatriation flights.

While India was allowed to fly back their citizens after by easily entering other countries, it was not willing to permit the others to do the same. This has come in for severe criticism in the international community.

Following this, India’s civil aviation ministry is in talks with some of the governments to enter into bilateral agreements to resume special international flights on a case-to-case basis. But no scheduled international flights will resume services before July 15, the ministry has clarified.