Air India on Sunday announced that it will be conducting 36 flights between the United States and India from July 11 to July 19, 2020 under the Vande Bharat Mission.
“Tickets may be booked through Air India website only effective 20:00 hours (IST) on 6 July, equivalent to New York (EDT 1030 hrs of 6' July 2020), Chicago (CDT 0930 hrs of 6 July 2020) & San Francisco (PDT 0730 hrs of 6 July 2020), “it said.
Earlier on June 22, the US Department of Transportation had announced that it had barred Air India from operating chartered flights between India and the United States from July 22 without its prior approval, in an apparent retaliation for the Indian government not allowing American carriers to operate between the two countries.
Therefore, on 23 June, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had said that India is considering establishing “individual bilateral bubbles” with US, UK, Germany, and France which will allow airlines of each country in the pact to operate international flights.
On June 28, the Ministry announced that Air India will be conducting 114 flights to and from 17 countries between July 3 and 15 under the fourth phase of the Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indian abroad.
Under the fourth phase of the mission, Air India will be conducting 114 flights connecting India with Canada, the US, the UK, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Thailand, South Africa, Russia, Australia, Myanmar, Japan, Ukraine and Vietnam.
The mission involved 860 Air India flights, 1256 charter flights and 8 Naval Ships. The stranded Indians returned by Air India flights were 1,64,121; Indian Navy helped return 3,987 people in 8 ships from Maldives, Iran and Colombo; chartered flights - 2,30,832 and foreign carriers - 3,969; about 60 air ambulances were operated and 95,220 people have returned through land border check-posts from neighboring countries.