'Air travel running smoothly, 39,969 fliers so far': Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri

Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Saturday said domestic air travel operations continue to run smoothly in India and the airports across the country handled 513 departures and 512 arrivals on Friday, the fifth day of resumption of partial flights. Domestic air travel resumed on May 25, two months after they were halted due to the coronavirus lockdown.

In a tweet, Puri said there were a total of 79,941 footfalls at airports and 39,969 passengers took flights. He further broke down the figures for this week's civil aviation operations.

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Air travel resume in India

Hardeep Singh Puri had on Thursday said air travel operations have now begun in all of India after West Bengal became the latest state to allow flights to resume. Puri cited data from real-time air traffic tracker portal Flightradar24 that indicated planes currently flying over South Asia at 9.16 am Thursday morning. On Twitter, the minister expressed optimism that Indian airspace and airports will "get as busy as they always were" in the coming days.

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Nationwide services were resumed on May 25 after a gap of two months and 428 flights were operated within the country on the same day. All scheduled domestic services were suspended in India from March 25 to May 24 due to restrictions in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. India has been under lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of the coronavirus that has infected more than 1.7 lakh people and killed at least 4,900 people in the country till now.

(PTI Photo)

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