Amid much chaos and confusion on the evacuation of Indians from Ukraine, the first Air India special chartered flight (AIC 1944) carrying 219 passengers from Romanian capital Bucharest, landed at Mumbai airport at 7.50 pm on Saturday. This is the first flight from Ukraine back home after the Russian invasion. It was earlier scheduled to land in Mumbai at 4 pm.
The second evacuation flight AIC 1942 with 250 passengers and third evacuation flight AIC 1940 are expected to return from Bucharest and Budapest, respectively, to the Delhi airport on Sunday morning.
According to Air Traffic Control of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), Boeing 787 aircraft, the Air India chartered flight landed at the Mumbai airport at 7.50 pm. Union minister Piyush Goyal was at the airport to receive the passengers returning from Ukraine. Soon after, the flight landed, Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took to Twitter to welcome back the evacuated citizens tagging a tweet of Goyal who was seen speaking to the passengers aboard the Air India flight.
“Welcome back to the motherland! Glad to see the smiles on the faces of Indians safely evacuated from Ukraine at the Mumbai airport. Govt. led by PM Narendra Modi ji is working relentlessly to ensure safety of every Indian,” wrote Goyal along with the tweet.
He also spoke to the students and asked them to pass on the message to their friends who are still stuck that the Indian government is on the job.
"I had trust that the Indian government would definitely bring us back to our country. There was some fear and panic, but we are very happy to be back to India,” said an MBBS student who returned from Ukraine.
The evacuation flight had left from Mumbai for Bucharest at 3.38 am and landed there around 10.45 am IST. From Bucharest’s Henri Coanda International Airport, it departed for the Mumbai airport at around 1.55 pm (IST).
“The flight got delayed as the buses carrying Indian students from Kyiv were far away from Bucharest airport, that’s why the departures from Mumbai and Delhi were delayed," said an airline source.
The airline also posted a short video wherein the first batch of evacuees can be seen clapping in joy of returning to India. The government is not charging the rescued passengers for the evacuation flights. All three flights were sent from India on Saturday only.
Earlier, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said on Twitter that AI1944 flight with "219 Indian nationals has taken off from Romania". "Regarding evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine, we are making progress. Our teams are working on the ground round the clock. I am personally monitoring," he added.
In light of the current crisis in Ukraine, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has provided free services including free COVID testing, vaccines, food and all other facilities to all the students returning from Ukraine.
The airport operators has exempted to those coming from Ukraine from uploading documents on Air Suvidha before departure on humanitarian grounds and can enter the airport. The airport has blocked a special corridor for the arriving passengers, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) said, adding as per the guidelines laid down by the government, the Airport Health Organization (APHO) team at the facility have conducted mandatory temperature checks. According to CSMIA, it has fenced in a special area at the facility for the arriving passengers to sit and also provided them with free Wi-Fi codes, distributed food and water bottles.
According to officials, those who reached the Ukraine-Romania border and Ukraine-Hungary border by road have been taken to Bucharest and Budapest, respectively, by Indian government officials so that they can be evacuated in these Air India flights.
Before the first flight from Romania took off on Saturday, India's ambassador to Romania Rahul Shrivastava addressed the students inside the aircraft.
