NEW DELHI, Oct 6: India and Bhutan have activated air transport bubble for better passenger movements between the two countries. India already has similar agreements with Maldives and Afghanistan and Bhutan becomes the third country in southern Asia with which India has signed the air bubble agreement.
Ruchira Kamboj, the Indian Ambassador to Bhutan, announced this in a tweet, “#TransportBubble is ready to go! Flights between Bhutan and India have commenced and are ready to facilitate effortless travel.”
Druk Air, the national flag carrier of Bhutan, operated the first flight from Paro to Bagdogra, West Bengal. The arrangement was expected to benefit around 4,000 Bhutanese students enrolled in Indian universities.
The Corona pandemic has caused a major adverse impact on international travel in the last six months. The governments across the world have come up with transport air bubbles as a makeshift reciprocal arrangement between two countries to re-start passenger movements. It helps to decrease a host of quarantine and COVID examination rules in arrival destinations.
India is already in talks with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for transport air bubble.
With Bhutan, India now has transport air bubble arrangements with 14 countries with the focus being on those countries that have an enormous presence of Indians including the US, UK, and the United Arab Emirates besides Bahrain, Canada, France, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Nigeria and Qatar.
Hardeep Singh Puri, The Union Civil Aviation Minister, recently had announced that India was negotiating with other countries like Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Kenya, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand to resume international flight operations.
(Venkatesh Iyer)