1st evacuation flight carrying 219 Indian nationals from Ukraine lands in Mumbai

The first Air India flight carrying 219 Indian evacuees from Ukraine landed at the Mumbai airport from Bucharest Romania on Saturday evening ATC sources saidOperated with a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane Air India flight AI1944 touched down the runway at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport CSMIA at 750 pm they saidUnion Minister Piyush Goyal was at the airport to receive the Indian nationals returning from warhit Ukraine on their arrival The Air India flight had left from Mumbai for Bucharest at 338 am Saturday and landed there at around 1045 am Indian Standard Time It departed for Mumbai at 155 pm ISTThe Ukrainian airspace has been closed for civil aircraft operations since the morning of February 24 and therefore the evacuation flights are operating out of Bucharest and Budapest Indian nationals who reached the UkraineRomania border by road have been taken to Bucharest by Indian government officials so that they can be evacuated in the Air India flightsPiyush Goyal with Air India staff at Mumbai airport PicPallav PaliwalAround 16000 Indians mainly students were stranded in Ukraine Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had said on February 24 The distance between Kyiv and the Romanian border checkpoint is approximately 600 km and it takes anywhere between eight hours to 11 hours to cover it by roadThe second Air India flight carrying Indian nationals will be arriving in Delhi on February 27 PicPallav PaliwalThe Indian embassy in Ukraine on Friday said it was working to establish evacuation routes from Romania and Hungary External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had earlier in the day said on Twitter that AI1944 with 219 Indian nationals has taken off from RomaniaRegarding evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine we are making progress Our teams are working on the ground round the clock I am personally monitoring he added Air India will operate more flights on Saturday to Bucharest and Hungarian capital Budapest to evacuate Indians stranded in UkraineAround 16000 Indians mainly students were stranded in Ukraine PicPallav PaliwalPrior to the closure of the Ukrainian airspace Air India had operated a flight to Ukraines capital Kyiv on February 22 that brought 240 people back It had planned to operate two more flights on February 24 and February 26 but could not as the Russian offensive began on February 24 and the Ukrainian airspace was consequently shut downThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever