Passengers who were brought back to Bengaluru from London in the Boeing-777 aircraft were all praises for the government of India and its initiative of Vande Bharat Mission.
Meghna Manjunath, a 26-year-old passenger who flew back to Bengaluru in the Air India flight took to social media platform Twitter to provide live updates of her journey. With a series of tweets, Meghna explained the process of getting back to India and the formalities one has to undergo amid the novel coronavirus threat in the country.
As per her tweet, on arrival one has to undergo a health check that includes body temperature, blood oxygen saturation and heart rate. After the health check and immigration, all the asymptomatic passengers were stamped to go to quarantine facility while people showing symptoms were not allowed to board the flight in the United Kingdom. On the hospitality, Meghna wrote,
“Passengers were provided sandwiches and water while waiting for quarantine facility booking. All formalities were completed in 2 hours. We were also provided with three boxes of snacks for breakfast until reaching the hotel for quarantine.”
Meghna later thanked Air India and the staff of Bengaluru Airport for the hospitality. Meghna is an architecture student at the University of Sheffield who was planning to return home when all international flights were canceled leaving her stranded like other Indians.
Social distancing maintained throughout
Another passenger, Sunitha Rajeev, spoke to the New Indian Express about her experience of coming back to her hometown. Sunitha had been to the United Kingdom to attend her daughter’s graduation ceremony and was scheduled to return on the 11th of April. When the announcement about the arrangement of flights was made, there was anxiety and uncertainty. The passengers were reportedly asked to buy the ticket a day before but were made to wait for a day to get the confirmation. As Sunitha recalls,
“When we boarded the flight, unlike the usual flights, there was no one to greet us. But they had arranged for breakfast, lunch, snacks, masks, sanitizer and two water bottles. The seating arrangement was normal. We were about 300 passengers. There were announcements asking us to wear our mask. The flight only left after we underwent a health checkup.”
On exiting the airport terminal in Bengaluru after testing negative, passengers were asked to board a state-run bus with 20 other passengers maintaining social distance. The passengers were taken to quarantine facility i.e. hotels. The passengers don’t get to choose the hotels but can choose the category of hotels. Reportedly, if their choice is a 3-star hotel, it is Keys Whitefield and if the choice is 5-star, then it is Taj Yeshwanthpur.
Source: News18
