Flight to ghost town had crew wearing full protective suits | India News
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https://ift.tt/eA8V8J News February 01, 2020 at 09:23AM
NEW DELHI: An Air India jumbo jet is expected to take off with Indians, majority of who are students, from Wuhan, the epicentre of deadly coronavirus, and reach Delhi in early hours of Saturday. While the government expects 366 Indians evacuees on this flight, the exact number of evacuees will be known when boarding is completed.
The special flight on Boeing 747 “Ajanta” had left Delhi at on Friday afternoon with four pilots, 15 cabin crew, a team of doctors from Delhi’s RML Hospital, medical equipment and other support staff. It landed there at 7.46 pm (Wuhan time), with the pilots exclaiming in the cockpit “khaali airport, khaali roads” during final approach to the ghost town — a bustling economic centre till a few days back. Ajanta was supposed to take off at 10 pm (IST). But till well past that time, boarding hadn’t begun as many of the evacuees had not reached the airport, said AI officials.
This is the first of the evacuation flights by India and AI could operate the second one on Saturday. Special arrangements have been made at IGI Airport and no person and baggage from this aircraft will need to go inside the terminal. Ajanta will be parked at a remote bay (no aerobridge) where customs and immigration will set up special counters for doing the required clearance. Passengers will board an ITBP bus from the ramp and head to their quarantine centres. Crew and other personnel on this aircraft will also remain in isolation for about a week at their homes.
With AI’s director (operations) Captain Amitabh Singh on board to supervise this evacuation flight, the 423-seater aircraft took off with four pilots — two commanders Captain Kamal Mohan, Captain S H Reza; and two first officers Captain Sanjay Achalkar and Captain Bhupesh Narain. Everyone onboard the Delhi-Wuhan flight wore full protective suit on landing in Wuhan, before opening the aircraft door there.
“No service will take place on the flight. Food packets and water bottles will be kept on each. There will be no interaction (between cabin crew and passengers),” said an AI official. Two lavs will be kept only for crew. AI chairman Ashwani Lohani, who was at Delhi Airport to meet the crew of this special flight, said masks have been arranged for the crew and passengers. “For our crew, we have also arranged complete protective gear,” he said.
All the personnel volunteered for this flight, and subsequent ones, despite the risk of spending hours with possibly infected people in the closed environ of an aircraft, with cash-starved AI — which is unable to pay salaries on time — carrying out this operation from its resources. To be sure, all the crew and other staff will wear full protective gear during the flight back to India.
Lohani tweeted: “The national carrier once again comes to the rescue – this time to evacuate Indians from Wuhan, the site of the outbreak of coronavirus. This mission begins today with a Jumbo 747 operating between Delhi and Wuhan. Jai Hind”
AI, which is on the block, has in the past on numerous occasions carried out difficult and dangerous rescue missions to war zones like Libya, Iraq and Yemen, with the most famous being the airlift from Kuwait in 1990. In August 1990, AI and erstwhile Indian Airlines evacuated more than a lakh Indians from Iraq and Kuwait via 488 flights in 59 days, created the world record for largest aerial evacuation since 1948-49.
The special flight on Boeing 747 “Ajanta” had left Delhi at on Friday afternoon with four pilots, 15 cabin crew, a team of doctors from Delhi’s RML Hospital, medical equipment and other support staff. It landed there at 7.46 pm (Wuhan time), with the pilots exclaiming in the cockpit “khaali airport, khaali roads” during final approach to the ghost town — a bustling economic centre till a few days back. Ajanta was supposed to take off at 10 pm (IST). But till well past that time, boarding hadn’t begun as many of the evacuees had not reached the airport, said AI officials.
This is the first of the evacuation flights by India and AI could operate the second one on Saturday. Special arrangements have been made at IGI Airport and no person and baggage from this aircraft will need to go inside the terminal. Ajanta will be parked at a remote bay (no aerobridge) where customs and immigration will set up special counters for doing the required clearance. Passengers will board an ITBP bus from the ramp and head to their quarantine centres. Crew and other personnel on this aircraft will also remain in isolation for about a week at their homes.
With AI’s director (operations) Captain Amitabh Singh on board to supervise this evacuation flight, the 423-seater aircraft took off with four pilots — two commanders Captain Kamal Mohan, Captain S H Reza; and two first officers Captain Sanjay Achalkar and Captain Bhupesh Narain. Everyone onboard the Delhi-Wuhan flight wore full protective suit on landing in Wuhan, before opening the aircraft door there.
“No service will take place on the flight. Food packets and water bottles will be kept on each. There will be no interaction (between cabin crew and passengers),” said an AI official. Two lavs will be kept only for crew. AI chairman Ashwani Lohani, who was at Delhi Airport to meet the crew of this special flight, said masks have been arranged for the crew and passengers. “For our crew, we have also arranged complete protective gear,” he said.
All the personnel volunteered for this flight, and subsequent ones, despite the risk of spending hours with possibly infected people in the closed environ of an aircraft, with cash-starved AI — which is unable to pay salaries on time — carrying out this operation from its resources. To be sure, all the crew and other staff will wear full protective gear during the flight back to India.
Lohani tweeted: “The national carrier once again comes to the rescue – this time to evacuate Indians from Wuhan, the site of the outbreak of coronavirus. This mission begins today with a Jumbo 747 operating between Delhi and Wuhan. Jai Hind”
AI, which is on the block, has in the past on numerous occasions carried out difficult and dangerous rescue missions to war zones like Libya, Iraq and Yemen, with the most famous being the airlift from Kuwait in 1990. In August 1990, AI and erstwhile Indian Airlines evacuated more than a lakh Indians from Iraq and Kuwait via 488 flights in 59 days, created the world record for largest aerial evacuation since 1948-49.
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from WordPress https://ift.tt/36RrVbT
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J News February 01, 2020 at 09:23AM
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