Indians book pricey flights from UK

Business people, students studying in the United Kingdom and others are making a beeline for booking commercial and much pricier charter flights to return to the country, following the UK’s decision to ban the entry of Indian nationals from Friday in the wake of a deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that also forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to cancel his trip to India. “We have definitely seen a rise in requests since Monday for London,” JetSetGo Aviation founder Kanika Tekriwal told ET. “Since Monday, we have had about 12 enquiries, out of which approximately 40% have already booked their flights with us. This increase is almost 80%, if we compare it with the flights to London before the announcement.”Another business jet operator also said, on condition of anonymity, that the number of enquiries has shot up since the UK announced the ban. Charter flight services could cost from ₹80,000 an hour for an eight-seat turboprop to ₹5-6 lakh for a 16-seat jet.The people who are looking for a way to reach the UK before Friday are mostly business people and students. For instance, Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla, whose company makes the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in India, said in a television interview on Wednesday that he would be “leaving for the UK tonight”.On Monday, the UK banned all travellers from India, barring British passport and residence permit holders, starting Friday and put India on a ‘red list’ of countries. While Hong Kong has also banned flights from India, the US has issued travel advisories for India and France has announced a ten-day mandatory quarantine for Indian travellers.A number of countries announced restrictions after India reported a massive surge in infections. On Tuesday, India reported more than 295,000 new cases, the highest increase in a day till date.Some lesser-known companies are also operating charter flights on Thursday between India and airports in the UK, according to industry executives.Air India Cancelled FlightsET, however, could not independently verify with the agents operating these flights.Meanwhile, Air India, which operates 13 flights a week between the two countries, has cancelled flights between India and the UK from April 24-30 and said that demand for its flights may have been higher. "There has always been a demand for seats on our flights to UK. There may have been some rise but this cannot be quantified or related to this flight restriction specifically," Air India said in an email response to ET’s query.During the middle of April, the national carrier had cancelled flights to the UK from smaller cities such as Amritsar, Goa, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.82190764Executives at British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said the two UK carriers were continuing limited operations as part of bubble flights and that there was already a lot of demand in the past one week, primarily from people wanting to rush back to the UK.An executive at Virgin Atlantic said the private carrier’s India-UK flights are already booked till the end of this month. Bookings include those by US nationals or residence permit holders who are allowed into the country.Virgin Atlantic flies five weekly flights from India to the UK from Mumbai and Delhi while the UK’s flag carrier British Airways operates ten flights from Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.In a statement, after the UK added India to the ‘red list’, Virgin Atlantic said: "Where a Virgin Atlantic customer is unable to travel for any reason, we offer as much choice and flexibility as possible to help you change or amend your plans, with the option to make a date change or name(s) change with the service fee waived, for a new travel date all the way until April 30, 2023. Fare difference may apply.”

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3dGJxhg