In about 10 days from now, regular international flights will resume from Chennai after two years with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
As part of the prepation to resume international flights, officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) held a meeting on Wednesday with all stakeholders in the Chennai airport, including airlines, customs, immigration and CISF. “We are handling close to 10,000 passengers and this may go up by another 5,000-10,000 depending on the load factor in flights. We have asked the CISF, customs and immigration to deploy additional staff, close to what they had before the outbreak of the pandemic. The primary concern is to ensure smooth operations and clear the queues in minimum time,” an official said.
Though regular flights are to restart, full-fledged operations may see a slower return as some airlines may take time to resume flights here, sources said. “We will know how many flights each airline will operate in the coming week when the final flight schedule arrives. This is bound to evolve after the operations begin. During the first week of resumption of flights, we will be monitoring at night to check if there are any issues in the terminal as well,” the official said.
