India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation announced on September 28 a full schedule of 270 repatriation flights out of the UAE. This will commence from October 1 to bring back its citizens who wish to return home in the face of disruptions caused by COVID-19.

The new schedule will run until October 25. This is the seventh phase of the Vande Bharat repatriation mission. National budget airline Air India Express will operate these flights and may be supplemented later, if necessary, by other Indian carriers, the Ministry disclosed.

The flights will depart from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah to multiple destinations in India. A number of new Indian airports have been added this time, which will help many Indians in the UAE to directly reach their final destination without having to take a connecting flight.

There will also be repatriation flights from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In Oman, the flights will operate from both Muscat and Salalah airports. In Saudi Arabia, the airports of origin are Dammam and Riyadh.

In the reverse direction, 269 flights will be operated to the UAE from Indian cities by Air India Express for 24 days from October 1. These flights will take back Indians who live and work in the UAE.

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On September 27, Air India Express announced that health authorities in Dubai will no longer accept RT-PCR Covid-19 test results from four laboratories in India.

“The RT-PCR negative Covid-19 reports from four Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-approved laboratories – Suryam Lab in Jaipur, Microhealth Labs in Kerala, Dr P Bhasin Pathlabs Ltd. in Delhi, and the Noble Diagnostic Centre in Delhi – will not be accepted anymore,” the airline said in its travel blog.

Passengers to Dubai are advised to obtain pre-travel RT-PCR reports from Pure Health-approved laboratories, it said.

On September 28, over 200 Indian passengers heading to Dubai were barred from boarding their flights because their Covid-19 test results were deemed invalid, airport authorities said. They were carrying RT-PCR reports from the blacklisted laboratories.

At Kannur International Airport in Kerala, 117 passengers were denied permission to board an Air India Express flight to Dubai, according to an airport official. At Kozhikode International Airport, some 100 passengers were held back. Only 66 adult passengers and one child were allowed to board the flight leaving at 12.30 pm. Those stranded were given free replacement tickets.
A GoAir flight to Dubai took special permission from the UAE authorities to ensure smooth operations for the day, the official said.

Neeraj Agarwal, consul for Press, Information, and Culture at the Indian Consulate in Dubai, said that passengers wishing to fly from India to Dubai can bring test report from other ICMR-approved facilities, except the four labs barred by Dubai authorities.

Kerala’s Micro Health Laboratories, one of the blacklisted labs, said the problem was created by 2,600 fake test results issued by another lab forging its letterhead and stamps.

Micro Health, which has 27 labs across the world and franchise labs in Kerala, had partnered with the UAE’s official testing facility, Pure Health, in July.

The lab has now referred the matter to the police and has also launched a QR code system to check the authenticity of the test results.

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All Air India Express flights to and from Dubai will operate as per original schedule with effect from September 19, the airline announced on Twitter and Facebook on September 19. This announcement followed a one day suspension ordered by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority for flouting COVID-19 travel regulations.

Regarding the suspension notice from DCAA, Air India Express said: “The notice has been issued on account of erroneous acceptance of two Covid-19 positive passengers by the airline’s ground handling agents, one at Delhi and another at Jaipur.” It added: “As per information gathered, passengers who were seated in close proximity to the Covid-19 positive passenger on each flight have undergone tests and quarantined as determined by the Dubai Health Authority.”

On September 18, the DCAA had ordered a 15-day suspension of the airline’s Dubai operations and its Dubai flights had to be rescheduled to Sharjah. The rescheduled flights were to Kozhikode (Calicut), Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi, Mumbai and Kannur. Barring one or two, most of the passengers flew on the rescheduled flights both ways, an airline official said.

The airline pointed out that before receiving the notice, it submitted a letter to the DCAA expressing the airline’s sincere apologies and detailing the various actions taken by it in association with the ground handling agents concerned to safeguard against repeat of such incidents.

“Air India Express has advised the handling agents to implement a three-tier checking mechanism to avoid any such lapse in the future,” it said.
The DCAA has asked Air India to pay for all the expenditures incurred by the respective authorities regarding medical/ quarantine of any passenger on the flights that carried the two COVID-positive travellers.

The UAE has made it mandatory for all incoming passengers to procure a Covid-19 negative test result. Passengers travelling from India can get the test done from a Pure Health or an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved laboratory.

India has an air bubble agreement with UAE that is valid till October 31.

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While the Kozhikode plane mishap is one of the deadliest in India in a decade, the country has seen some major deadly ones before.

Here is a timeline:

May 2010: Air India Express Flight 812, a Boeing 737-800, flying on the Dubai-Mangalore route overshot the runway on landing at the Mangalore International Airport killing 158 passengers on board.

July 2000: Alliance Air Flight 7412 crashed in a residential estate of Patna after the pilot lost control of the aircraft and stalled. Casualty included 55 people aboard, along with 5 on the ground.

November 1996: Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 763 collided mid-air with Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907, all 349 people on board both flights were killed, making it the deadliest mid-air collision in history. It is also known as the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision as the clash happened above Charkhi Dadri district in Haryana.

April 1993: Indian Airlines Flight 491 crashes into a truck at the end of the runway while taking off from Aurangabad due to pilot error and the failure of the aviation administration to control highway traffic. 55 people died.

July 1991: Indian Airlines Flight 257 crashed on a descent into Imphal due to pilot error killing all 69 occupants.

Feb 1990: Indian Airlines Flight 605 crashed on its final approach to Bangalore airport, killing 92 people. The cause was pilot error.

June 1982: Air India Flight 403 crashed at the Sahar International Airport in Mumbai due to bad weather. Two crew members and 15 passengers lost their lives.

Jan 1978: Air India Flight 855 crashed off the coast of Bandra after the captain became spatially disoriented following the failure of one of the flight instruments in the cockpit. All 213 aboard were killed.

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