International passengers travelling to India from 'at risk' countries or those who have been in such countries in the preceding 14 days are now mandatorily required to pre-book RT-PCR tests at six airports from December 20, including Delhi and Mumbai, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) announced recently. Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata are the other airports where pre-booking of RT-PCR tests has been made compulsory for international passengers.
"Air Suvidha portal would be modified to allow the passengers to mandatorily pre-book the RT-PCR test if they are coming from the countries 'at risk' or have visited 'at risk' countries in the last 14 days … to stabilise the system and to ensure that the passengers would not have any problem in pre-booking, payment, etc., it may be implemented in six metro cities, namely, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in the first phase," according to a Civil Aviation Ministry memo.
According to the Health Ministry, the list of 'at risk' nations includes those in Europe, like the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Hong Kong, and Israel.
"DGCA is requested to issue advisory to all airlines to check mandatory pre-booking of their passengers before boarding the flight. In case any passenger is having any difficulty in pre-booking, they may not be denied boarding, but it would be the responsibility of the airlines to identify and accompany such passengers to the registration counter at the airport for testing," the memo noted.
The DGCA has announced that commercial international flights from India will resume on January 31 amid rising fear of the new Omicron variant. Ahead of this, the DGCA had announced that the scheduled flight would resume from December 15. This order was revised when the nation displayed concerns over another wave due to the new variant. The DGCA had also announced that the order would not affect the current flights that are operating as it is only for the complete resumption that has now been postponed.
Earlier on November 30, the Centre issued an advisory in which it mandated the international travellers to fill a self-declaration board form on Air Suvidha Portal. The passengers need to provide details of the travel history of the last 14 days, as per the advisory.