The Covid 19 pandemic has made a worst hit on the travel industry as many countries put restrictions on international flights. India is also one of the countries which have barred international flights. But now India has decided to resume international flights from December 15, 2021. It was a long awaited decision which the Indian government took last week and decided to regularise international flights.

While sharing the news the government of India explained that though the international flights are being resumed still there are concerns of high numbers of coronavirus cases and new Omicron variant which has been recently discovered by the scientists in South Africa.

India has prepared a list of 14 countries which are ‘at-risk’. The ‘at risk’ countries are UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Singapore. There will be certain conditions on flights originating and transited from these countries. Extra precautions will be taken to handle travelers from these countries.

The Aviation Ministry of India, took this decision after due consultation with the Health Ministry of India.

The newly found variant Omicron was discovered in South Africa but according to reports the variant was in circulation before the discovery in South Africa.

The government of India, has also issued new guidelines for international flight international passengers.

According to new guidelines all the travelers need to upload self-declaration on Air Suvidha Portal along with their 14 days’ travel history.

They also need to upload a negative RT-PCR test report of Covid 19, that is not older than 72 hours.

Travelers from ‘at risk’ countries will be tested at airports on their arrival as well. Also there will be random testing of international travelers coming from countries other than the ‘at risk’ list.

These tests at airports will be chargeable and passengers will bear the cost and they will not be allowed to leave the airport till their test results arrive. If test reports are negative, they will be allowed to leave the airport but they have to quarantine themselves for 7 days and then retest will be done on 8th day and it’s negative then they need to self-monitor their health for another 7 days. In case of positive test reports at the airport, passengers will be taken to isolation.

With these restrictions, India is set to resume its international travel.