India to resume flight operations to UK from Jan. 8 - 30 planes per week to connect both countries till January 23

Flights will operate to and from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad only till January 23, the aviation ministry said Friday.File picture

TT Bureau, Agencies   |   New Delhi   |   01.01.21  : Flights between India and the United Kingdom are set to resume from January 8, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Friday, adding that only 30 of them will operate per week for now.

The arrangement will continue till January 23, Puri added.

Indian and UK carriers will each be operating 15 flights per week during the aforementioned period to and from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad only, he said.

Until December, over 60 passenger flights were operating between the two countries before the UK detected the emergence of a mutant strain of the coronavirus, which is supposed to be more infectious.

Thereafter, the aviation ministry suspended all passenger flights connecting the two countries from December 23 onwards.

Puri had announced on Wednesday that passenger flights between the UK and India would remain suspended till January 7 and they will resume in a "strictly regulated" manner thereafter. The earlier suspension period was from December 23 to December 31.

“It has been decided that flights between India and UK will resume from 8 Jan 2021,” Puri tweeted on Friday.

“Operations till 23 Jan will be restricted to 15 flights per week each for carriers of the two countries to & from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru & Hyderabad only,” he added.

The Health Ministry had announced on Tuesday that samples of all international passengers who arrived in India from December 9-22 and tested positive for COVID-19 will be subjected to genome sequencing, which helps in understanding how the new virus variant spreads and evolves.

The presence of the new UK variant of the virus has already been reported by Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.

Scheduled international passenger flights continue to remain suspended in the country since March 23 due to the pandemic.

However, airlines have been permitted to operate special international flights under the Vande Bharat Mission since May this year and under the bilateral air bubble pacts since July.

India has formed air bubble pacts with 24 countries, including the UK.