165 Bangladeshis return, 129 Indians leave

A total of 165 more stranded Bangladeshis returned home from Chennai today while 129 Indians left here for Delhi by separate chartered flights under the ongoing reparation drive conducted by the Bangladesh and Indian governments amid flight suspension due to COVID-19 pandemic.

A charter flight of Air Indian took off Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport for Delhi carrying 129 Indian citizens at 1:05 today, HSIA Director Group Captain AHM Touhid-ul Ahsan told media.

Later, an US-Bangla Airlines special ferry flight landed at HSIA from south Indian city Chennai at 2:45 pm bringing back 165 adults and one infant Bangladesh citizens, airlines source said.

On Friday, New Delhi started taking its nationals, who had been stuck here amid lockdown due to outbreak of deadly coronavirus, back home planning to run seven chartered flights from Dhaka within a week in the first phase repatriation.

Under the first phase, India will operate five more chartered flights to evacuate its stranded nationals from here to Mumbai on 10 May, to Delhi on May 11, to Srinagar on May 12, 13 and to Chennai on May 14.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Bangladesh also started the third phase of repatriation flight operation from India by bringing the rest of its stranded nationals home from different Indian cities.

Apart from today's flight, seven more chartered flights have been planned to operate from New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai to Dhaka under the third phase.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines will operate flights from Kolkata on May 10, from Mumbai on May 12, from Bangalore on May 13 or May 15 and from New Delhi on May 14 while US-Bangla airlines will operate three more special flights from Chennai on May 10, 13 and 14, a circular of Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi said earlier.

As per the government decision, all the returnee Bangladeshis would have to be sent to a 14-day institutional quarantine under the management of the Armed Forces Division (AFD) if they failed to show the medical certificate at the airport on their arrival here.

Besides India, Bangladesh also repatriated stranded Bangladeshis from Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar while more chartered flights have also been planned to bring back Bangladesh nationals from the UK, the USA, and Malaysia within a week.

On May 5, Bangladesh extended the ongoing ban on flight operation for the fifth consecutive time till May 16 to and from all European countries and the nations including India that restricted the entry of Bangladeshis to their territories as well as on all domestic routes over the coronavirus scare.

Other countries, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Bhutan, Myanmar and different European countries so far operated several special chartered flights amid the flight suspension to repatriate their citizens from here.