The government on Monday directed airlines to serve or sell in-flight meals from Thursday (April 15) only on those domestic flights that have a duration of over two hours, in wake of the sharp surge in Covid-19 cases in India. However, there are no restrictions on inflight meals on international flights as of now.
The ministry also suggested staggering of inflight meals among adjacent seats as far as possible, apparently to ensure that not all passengers remove their face masks to eat at the same time.
The new guidelines will come into effect from Thursday April 15.
The development comes after India reported close to 1.70 lakh Covid-19 cases on Monday, it’s highest single-day tally since the outbreak of the pandemic.With this, India has surpassed Brazil to record the second-highest number of virus cases.
As many as 1,68,912 more people tested positive for Covid-19 across the country in the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative caseload to 1,35,27,717, said the Union health ministry on Monday morning.
Recently, Aviation regulator DGCA had approved 18,843 flights per week from 108 airports for the summer schedule, which begins on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October.
The number of flights for this year’s summer schedule has been approved keeping in mind that airlines are permitted to operate not more than 80 per cent of their pre-COVID flights.
It said IndiGo’s 8,749 weekly flights and SpiceJet’s 2,854 have been approved for the summer schedule. GoAir’s 1,747 flights, Air India’s 1,683, Vistara’s 1,288 and AirAsia India’s 1,243 have also been approved.
India resumed domestic passenger flight operations on May 25 last year, after a gap of two months due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown. At that time, airlines were permitted to operate a maximum of 33 per cent of their pre-COVID flights. This was gradually increased to 80 per cent.
