VASCO: Of the 15 flights that were scheduled to arrive in Goa on Monday, only three landed at the Goa International Airport, Dabolim.
Two Indigo flights and one Air Asia landed at the airport. The Bangalore-Goa aircraft arrived with 30 passengers, while, the Delhi-Goa plane came with 33 people and Bangalore-Goa flight landed with 36 passengers.
During the departure from Goa Airport on Monday, the first Indigo flight left Goa for Delhi with 116 passengers, the Goa-Bangalore aircraft had 85 on board and third Air Asia Goa-Bangalore plane left with 76 people.
Speaking to media persons, Gagan Malik, Director of Dabolim International Airport informed that most flights were scheduled to arrive from Mumbai earlier. However, due to some restrictions there will be limited departures and arrivals. Therefore some flights, which were scheduled to arrive from Mumbai, were cancelled. Another flight, which was supposed to arrive from Delhi, was cancelled due to few passengers."
Malik said, "The Dabolim Airport will have three flight arrivals and departures, which will include two from Delhi and one from Bangalore”.
The Goa government’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) provides three options. The first option includes home quarantining oneself with a 14-day stamp on the hand. The second one is that a person can undergo the test by paying Rs 2,000 and the third option is if a person's COVID-19 tests reports come negative in the last 48 hours then he/she can move out.”
When asked whether there are chances of increasing the number of flights, he said there are standard connections to Goa and some metro connections are likely to commence.
He said, “The departure flights had more passengers as compared to the arrival flights. Some departure flights had 92 and 110 passengers so roughly around over 200 passengers departed. The number of passengers arriving was around 100".
Stating that they are following a full contactless system, Malik informed that social distancing is being maintained, cameras have been installed at several locations with regards to the boarding pass via web check-in, which is mandatory, besides hand and baggage sanitisation along with other strict checks as per SOP are strictly followed.
The Airport Director, declined to comment on any connection between the recent changes in the SOP of the State Government and the less number of flights and passengers arriving at Dabolim Airport.
“It is the decision of the State”, he said and added that the SOP of the Goa Government is comparatively "progressive" to other States wherein several options are available.
Malik said the pricing has been fixed by the DGCA.