New Delhi, June 22, 2020: After countries abroad started to make travel bubbles, India too now plans to do the same. According to reports, India is looking to create these travel bubbles from next month. These travel bubbles will then permit Indian travellers to go abroad to specific destinations, and will allow them to come into India as well. International travel from India could be a possibility from next month on under a bilateral bubble arrangement.
Furthermore, the government is also expecting domestic travel to go up by mid-July to at least half of what it was before the pandemic hit India.
According to a statement from Hardeep Singh Puri, Civil Aviation Minister, India used to have 3 to 3.5 lakh domestic passengers daily before the pandemic. The numbers have definitely dropped now as the country began with merely 30000 passengers during the pandemic on May 25. But now that has reached about 72000 passengers daily, according to him. Puri further said that he expects this number to go to 1.5 to 1.6 lakh passengers before mid-July. This is when the government will think about scheduling international flights on a country-by-country basis. It really depends on which countries will permit Indian tourists.
Also, more flights will be added by Air India under the Vande Bharat Mission, with a new phase that will see 750 flights being operated by airlines in India to the Gulf, and southeast Asia according to the reports published in timesofindia.indiatimes.com. The demand for travel is mostly from the US, Canada, Europe, Middle East, and southeast Asia. So, we might have travel bubbles to these destinations sooner than we can imagine.
