India-Bangladesh air bubble flights to resume from September 3

Dhaka: The Ministry of Civil Aviation, India released a circular today proposing resumption of flights to Bangladesh under air bubble with seven frequencies per week for carriers of either country from September 3.

SpiceJet has been allocated three frequencies per week on Delhi/Kolkata/Chennai/Mumbai-Dhaka; IndiGo 2 frequencies per week from points in India to Dhaka; and Air India 2 frequencies per week on Kolkata-Dhaka route.

India has been placed under Group C by CAAB and any passenger from India can travel to Bangladesh irrespective of Covid-19 vaccination status. 

Passengers travelling from Bangladesh to India shall be mandatorily subjected to self-paid confirmatory molecular tests on arrival at the Indian airports concerned (port of entry). It may be noted that passengers holding tourist visa allowed to enter India as on date.

As regards restriction of passengers on a narrow-body aircraft, the Indian carriers have intimated that there are multiple configurations of narrow-body aircraft in their fleet. Therefore instead of a blanket restriction of 140 passengers per aircraft it is proposed that the capacity may be restricted to a specific percentage of the installed seat capacity of the aircraft (90 per cent or 95 per cent).

The air bubble may be resumed with effect from September 3, 2021 till resumption of scheduled international passenger flights.