Image Credit : businesstoday.in
According to reports, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has extended the ban on scheduled international flights till 31st July. The DGCA has affirmed that the ban on international commercial passenger flights which was supposed to conclude on June 30, will remain in place until July 31, 2021.
The DGCA on its official Twitter handle issued a circular stated, “In a partial modification of circular dated 26-06-2020, the competent authority have further extended the validity of the circular issued on the subject cited above regarding Scheduled International commercial passenger services to/from India till 2359hrs IST of 31st July 2021”.
The circular further added that the restriction is not applicable to international all-cargo operations flights that have been approved by DCGA. It also informed that the international scheduled flights might be allowed on certain selected routes by the competent authority on case to case basis.
— DGCA (@DGCAIndia) June 30, 2021
As far as the reports are concerned, schedule passenger international flight were first banned in March 2020 due to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. The domestic flight resumed its services in the month of May. However, the international flights continued to remain suspended as the COVID-19 cases hardly reduced. Since the nationwide lockdown in March 2020, the DGCA have extended the ban on international flight for almost multiple times.
India through its Vande Bharat Mission repatriation exercise have enabled the Indian national to come back to their home. Later, in this mission air travel bubbles were also initiated. However, the international flights continues to be suspended worldwide as the new variants of COVID-19 keeps surfacing.