India’s Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri has announced that India will be sending additional flights to bring back stranded Indian nationals in New Zealand.

As a part of Vande Bharat Mission’s Phase 5, a host of flights have been announced starting August 1 that will bring back stranded Indian nationals from USA, Canada, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Thailand, Germany, Singapore, UK, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, New Zealand, Philippines and a few more countries.

The Vande Bharat Mission has brought back over 250,000 stranded Indian nationals from 53 countries in its Phase 1-4 and the additional flights announced will bring relief to those Indians who could not make it in the earlier flights.

The Vande Bharat Mission earlier in June and early July repatriated over 1800 stranded Indian nationals from New Zealand to seven different destinations in India that included New Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Trivandrum, and Ahmedabad. The last flight took off from Auckland on July 3, to New Delhi with just 50+ passengers.

All the passengers travelling back to India went into seven days institutional quarantine in and around New Delhi and home quarantine for another seven days.

The details regarding the bookings and ticket prices will be announced once finalised by the Ministry of Civil Aviation soon and will be relayed by the Indian High Commission in Wellington.

More to come.