International passengers avoid city airport to circumvent institutional quarantine

The special flight that came from Abu Dhabi via Vijayawada at 7.30 pm on Sunday was scheduled to bring 110 passengers. But the aircraft was empty when it reached here, as all of them had got down at Vijayawada because of the institutional quarantine, sources said. Interestingly, this was reportedly the first time since 1999 that a flight arrived here empty.

The special flight from Dubai was to bring 125 passengers to Chennai, but had only 24 of them, with the rest getting down at Vijayawada. In all, 408 passengers were to reach here on four special on Sunday. But only 139 of them came here, while the rest disembarked at Vijayawada and Delhi.

The Centre has announced earlier this month that the passengers coming to India on special flights should undergo medical check-up 96 hours before the trip. If the result is negative, they can show the certificate to officials at the airport so as to be allowed to be in home quarantine. However, the State government is continuing with the old procedure of insisting on institutional quarantine.

Due to this, there have been several instances of passengers carrying COVID-19 negative certificate entering into heated arguments with airport officials, demanding that they should be allowed to be in home quarantine. However, the officials here maintain that the change in the procedure was not implemented in the State because the virus spread is high. Now, most international passengers with certificates that proclaim them COVID negative are disembarking at the airports enroute like Vijayawada, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi or Bengaluru. Later, they would travel as domestic passengers or by road, sources said.