VASCO
In what could be further bad news for several Goans trying to return to the State, some Vande Bharat flights arriving from Kuwait have been cancelled after Kuwait aviation authorities have closed down their air space.
Dabolim Airport Director Gagan Malik speaking to reporters on Tuesday said some air spaces have been closed amid concerns of the new strain of Covid-19 virus.
“As of now, flights between Goa and UK have been suspended as per directives from the Centre. The Kuwait government has also passed some similar orders and has closed down its air space, due to which Vande Bharat flights scheduled to arrive in Goa have been cancelled by Air India.”
“We also had two flights which were supposed to come from UK through the Air Bubble system on December 26 and 28, but have been cancelled after the Centre suspended flights from UK over concerns of a new strain of the Covid-19 virus,” said Malik.
Malik told reporters that Dabolim Airport handled 82 relief flights between March 25 and December 21.
“We had a large number of foreign guests here and since March 25, we have handled 82 relief flights and around 15,000 adults and 200 infants travelled back to their countries.”
“We touched almost all major countries when the relief flights started and recently, we have had a rise in passengers who are moving to Dubai, Sharjah, London and Qatar by relief flights,” said Malik.
Rise in passenger footfalls at Dabolim Airport: Director
VASCO: Dabolim Airport Director Gagan Malik said there has been a steady rise in passenger footfalls at the airport.
“After we resumed domestic operations in May, we had around 14 flights a day, of which some were not even operating but flights slowly started operating after doubts among passengers were cleared.”
“Dabolim Airport started with increased precautionary measures and we used new safety techniques and passenger confidence increased.”
“Dabolim Airport has a high increase of footfalls since September and the graph continues to increase and we have almost reached 70 per cent of what we were doing pre-Covid times.”
“We are handling around 60 flights which are full with huge incoming passengers arriving to Goa on weekends and leaving on Sundays. We are expecting a huge rise in domestic passengers, considering the Christmas and New Year festive season,” Malik added.
