Air India passes through 1 million passengers Vande Bharat

While Air India recently reached a milestone, flying over a million passengers worldwide under the Vande Bharat mission, many Indians overseas still find it difficult to reach the country in a
emergency.

Flights connecting international airlines to mission flights also emerged as a problem.

Here is a recent example: Stuck in Beijing, Manjunath Setty, a Bengali, endured weeks of waiting, unable to attend his father’s funeral or comfort his family in person. Reason: Despite booking tickets, two well-known international airlines have sued visa rules to deny him boarding passes
moment.

In a social media post, Setty recounted her ordeal: “Even though Dad lost his battle with the coronavirus on October 1, I couldn’t even see him for the last time. And I wasn’t able to perform. the last rituals with my brothers or comfort my mother or my family at home, thanks to the two airlines “.

He had traveled from Beijing to Shanghai only to receive the boarding ticket rejected by Hongkong Airlines on 11 October “because I was taking more flights to Singapore and did not have a visa to travel to Singapore”.

Canceling the tickets, he booked again. “This time I booked a direct flight to Singapore on a Singapore Airlines flight for October 12th. But they refused the boarding ticket because I was not flying to India with only one carrier. I was to fly to Singapore on a Singapore Airlines flight and then take a Vande Bharat return flight to Trichy. However, they had a problem. “

Setty showed them her father’s death certificate and all subsequent airline tickets, but the airline concerned was not convinced. “They refused to issue a boarding pass and I had to cancel all the tickets once again,” he recalled. He had to wait another two weeks to finally arrive in India.

Since launching the Vande Bharat mission on 7 May 2020, Air India has flown over one million passengers covering 74 destinations in 54 countries. In all, it operated approximately 7,800 combined flights with the Air Transport Bubble mission and agreements.

Air India claims this is one of the largest evacuation drills of any civilian airline in the world. An additional 1,600 flights are expected through December 2020. The airline will launch flights to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia later this month with the Air Bubble system.