India Prepares for Travel Bubbles

Following in the footsteps of the Baltic countries, India has now decided to create travel bubbles as part of an initiative to scale up its Vande Bharat Mission. The announcement came with the gradual easing out of travel restrictions in the aftermath of the pandemic. 

While domestic flights have resumed from May 25, people are still apprehensive about flying and the numbers are still at an all-time low. However, the aviation ministry is hopeful that traffic will go up to half its original number by mid-July. Once that has happened, aviation minister H S Puri has said that they will slowly start scheduling international flights on a country-by-country basis.

The Vande Bharat Mission flights will continue until such time that the normal schedule can resume. As of now, Air India chairperson Rajiv Bansal is looking to operate about 650 flight from July. As part of this initiative, private airlines will also be allowed to operate their flights to the Gulf countries and Southeast Asia.

Before the pandemic, Indian airports had close to 3 lakh domestic passengers regularly. While the numbers have gone down steadily since the coronavirus, airports have seen up to 72,000 passengers a day since domestic flights became operational. Authorities hope that the numbers will continue to rise so that international flights can soon be resumed.