First flight lands in Odisha capital with 89 passengers

Bhubaneswar: Domestic flight services resumed here on Monday with a Vistara plane from Delhi touching down at the Biju Patnaik International Airport with 89 passengers and six crew members at 8.49am. This was the first scheduled flight to land at the airport here after two months since the lockdown.
“The flight from Delhi landed as per schedule. The air traffic control had been intimated about the operation of Vistara’s Delhi flight a day before.The passengers followed the safety protocol and social distancing norms. The arrival lounge had been properly sanitized,” airport director V V Rao said. He added that the passengers were asked to download the Aarogya Setu app on their arrival.
Those from Odisha, who were stranded in Delhi owing to the imposition of the lockdown to prevent coronavirus, heaved a sigh of relief as they landed on their soil. Among them was Kendrapada MP Anubhav Mohanty, who was stuck in Delhi throughout the lockdown. He posted a picture of him leaving the aircraft wearing a face shield and tweeted, “This is my picture of returning to Odisha in first morning flight. It is rare to experience smell of your fresh air and soil of Odisha.”
A woman passenger, who refused to be named said, “I was apprehensive about the safety aspect while flying. But once I got into the plane, I was happy to see that the fellow passengers were maintaining the social distancing and hygiene norms. I was relieved to find the Delhi and Bhubaneswar airports well sanitized.”
Airport officials said the Vistara flight returned to Delhi with 73 passengers. “The return flight to Delhi was in the same aircraft, which took off at 10am. No other flight was scheduled between 10am and 6.30pm as the flights in between were cancelled,” an airport official said.
Though 10 flights had intimated their schedule to the airport officials, five of them remained cancelled. The airport officials said the airlines had not given any reason for the cancellation of flights. Among the ones cancelled are Indigo’s Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai flights and Alliance Air’s Jharsuguda flight. Apart from Vistara’s Delhi flights, four more flights — Air India’s Delhi, AirAsia’s Bengaluru, Indigo’s Bengaluru and Indigo’s Delhi one — will operate between 6.30pm and 10.30pm (will update on arrival/cancellation).
The state government on Sunday said domestic fliers arriving here and staying for more than 72 hours will have to go for home isolation (if they belong to urban areas) and for government quarantine facility (if they belong to rural areas). Travellers returning from the state within 72 hours need not be either home-quarantined or move to a government facility.
The airport had shut its operations since Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the national lockdown on March 24. Barring the unscheduled flights and helicopters that have been operating from here as part of relief work, cargo transportation and emergency services, no other flights were operated.