NEW DELHI, Sep 18: The Air India Express flights from India to Dubai have been banned from Friday till October 2 for allegedly taking two Corona positive passengers to the Emirate state. The ban order was issued by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority.
In a bid to circumvent the ban, the Air India Express said it was planning to operate the four scheduled India – Dubai flights to land at Sharjah instead to mitigate the hardships of the Indian fliers wanting to go to the United Arab Emirates.
The ban was imposed for the Air India Express allegedly bringing passengers with COVID-positive certificates twice during the last couple of weeks, senior government officials said. As per the UAE government rules, each passenger travelling from India need to bring original COVID-negative certificate from RT-PCR test done not more than 96 hours prior to the journey.
“A passenger, who had a COVID-positive certificate dated September 2, travelled on Air India Express’ Jaipur-Dubai flight on September 4. A similar incident had happened with a passenger on one of the airline’s other Dubai flights previously,” said one of the officials.
“Therefore, the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority has suspended Air India Express flights from September 18 to October 2,” the officials stated.
Both the incidents of passengers flying with COVID-positive certificates to Dubai from India on Air India Express flights happened during the last couple of weeks, the officials noted.
(Manas Dasgupta)