Updated May 28th, 2020 at 16:02 IST

With flights resuming in Bengal today, services back across India: Civil Aviation Minister

Civil Aviation Min Hardeep Singh Puri said air travel operations have now begun in all of India after West Bengal became the latest to allow flights to resume

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Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri 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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Bengal resumes air travel

On May 25, domestic flight operations across the country began but it could not be restarted in West Bengal as the state machinery was involved in the relief and restoration work after the extremely severe Cyclone Amphan impacted major parts of the state badly. On Thursday, Kolkata's Netaji Subash Chandra Bose International Airport saw huge queues of passengers waiting to enter the airport and board their flights as domestic flight services were started this morning.

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Nationwide services were resumed on Monday 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 1.5 lakh people and killed more than 4,300 people in the country till now.

On Sunday night, the central government announced that domestic passenger flights will begin in West Bengal from Thursday. Other states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu had also opposed the resumption of flights due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases. Therefore, on Sunday night, the central government had said that airports in these states will be handling a significantly reduced number of daily flights from Monday onwards.

(PTI Photo)

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Published May 28th, 2020 at 16:01 IST