COVID-19: UK announces 12 additional flights to evacuate stranded nationals from India

The United Kingdom on Friday announced 12 additional charter flights to evacuate its nationals who are stranded in India amid travel restrictions owing to the coronavirus crisis.

The announcement was made by the British High Commission. The additional flights' announcement comes days after UK High Commission said that seven charter flights will evacuate Britishers from Goa, Mumbai and New Delhi.

These 19 flights will evacuate in total 5000 people from India, the UK High Commission said in a statement.The first charter flight from India reached London Stanstead on Thursday morning with 317 British nationals on board from Goa.

The embassy also announced the schedule of 12 flights. Three of the 12 flights will take off from Amritsar on April 13, 17 and 19. Two flights are scheduled to embark from Ahmedabad on April 13, 15 and two from Goa on April 14, 16.

One flight each will take off from Goa, Thiruvananthapuram Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai during the time period from April 15 to 20.

"We are doing all we can to get thousands of British travellers in India home. This is a huge and complex operation which also involves working with the Indian Government to enable people to move within India to get on these flights," UK Minister of State for South Asia and the Commonwealth, Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon

"Over 300 people arrived from Goa on Thursday morning, 1,400 more will arrive over the Easter weekend and these 12 flights next week will bring back thousands more," he added.

The British Government had announced a worldwide partnership between the UK Government and airlines to repatriate nationals stranded due to the unprecedented international travel and domestic restrictions in place as a result of coronavirus outbreak.

India had imposed a 21-day nationwide lockdown on March 24 in a bid to combat the spread of coronavirus. It also banned all international passenger flight operations.