TIRUCHY: Air Indian Express flight with crew took off from Tiruchy International Airport at 1 pm on Saturday to bring back Indian nationals stranded in Malaysia under the Vande Bharat Mission.
As many as 177 passengers arrived in the city in the night. District Collector S Sivarasu, City Health Officer A Jagannathan, and other senior officials were monitoring arrangements.
The flight returned home with passengers at 11.20 pm. “We are expecting about 196 passengers. They will be placed under in quarantine at the Government Engineering College in Sethurapatti for 14 days,” said the Collector S Sivarasu before the arrival on Saturday evening.
“We are already following a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) suggested by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Our workers will conduct the necessary sanitisation works at the airport to ensure safety,” an officer said. Meanwhile, the national carrier’s rescue operation was led by women pilots – Captain Kavitha Rajkumar as the commanding officer of the Tiruchy-Malaysia-Tiruchy mission and Captain Bindu Sebastian for the Kochi-Muscut-Kochi operation.