DHAKA, May 31, 2020 (BSS) – Novoair, one of the country’s private airlines, operated a special flight from Kolkata today under facilitation of the government to bring back 39 Bangladeshi nationals stranded in India amid flight suspension due to COVID-19 pandemic.
“The ferry flight of Novoair operated by ATR aircraft from Kolkata landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) here at 5:18 pm today bringing back 39 Bangladeshi citizens,” spokesperson of the airlines told BSS.
Novoair, as the third carrier of Bangladesh following Biman Bangladesh Airlines and another private air operator US-Bangla Airlines operated the chartered flight today for the first time from India amid the ongoing flight suspension.
With the aforesaid returnees, Bangladesh has brought back around 3,700 of its standard citizens through 28 chartered flights during the ongoing flight suspension due to COVID -19 pandemic.
As per the government decision, all the returnee Bangladeshis would be sent to14-day institutional quarantine under the management of the Armed Forces
Division (AFD) if they fail to show medical certificates at the airport on their arrival here.
Apart from Kolkata, Dhaka in coordination with Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi operated chartered flights from other Indian cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore since April 20.
Most of the returnees from India comprise patients, their families, students and tourists while apart from air routes over 500 Bangladesh nationals returned home by road in the last two weeks from a number of Indian cities, said Bangladesh mission in Delhi in a statement earlier.
On May 28, Bangladesh extended the ongoing ban on international flight operation for the seventh consecutive time till June 15 over the pandemic fear. However, it is set to resume the domestic flight operation in limited scale from tomorrow after more than two months.
Bangladesh also repatriated stranded Bangladeshis from different other countries including the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, Thailand, Singapore
and Malaysia.
Other countries, including India, the USA, the UK, India, Japan, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, Bhutan, Myanmar and different European countries also operated several special chartered flights amid the flight suspension to repatriate their citizens from here.