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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Dubai

Phase Four of the “Vande Bharat Mission”, which will begin on July 3, will focus on the Middile East, where a large number of expatriates have registered with Indian embassies to get seats in the special repatriation flights operated by Air India and Air India Express.

Anurag Srivastava, Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, told media that the Centre was committed to bringing back compatriots from the GCC countries, Malaysia, and Singapore in particular.

“This phase will particularly focus on countries where we still have a large number of Indians who have registered to return,” he said.

The Vande Bharat Mission, which is in its seventh week, has so far brought back 364,209 Indians from over 50 countries across 5 continents, he said. “Demand for these flights remains very high, especially in the Gulf region and, therefore, we are moving to further streamline the process,” Srivastava said.

However, a section of the Indian expat community in the UAE criticised the Indian government, which it said was shifting its responsibility of repatriation to community groups; more charter flights than VBM flights ferried people to India, Gulf News reported.

The Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi stated that 83,000 Indians have been repatriated through Air India and chartered flights of other airlines as of June 25. Of these, 54,000 were flown home on chartered flights (45,000 approved by the consulate and 9,000 approved by the embassy) and 29,000 on VBM flights.

On June 21, two community chartered flights had repatriated 395 Indians for free to Kerala. One flight was organised by Malayalam TV channel Kairali TV, and the other by the community group Overseas Malayali Association (Orma). While the former took 215 Malayalis home on an Air Arabia flight from Sharjah to Thiruvananthapuram, Orma flew home the rest from Dubai to Kannur.

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