Two more evacuation flights with 312 evacuees from the Philippines and the US landed at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport on Thursday, airport officials said.
The fifth Vande Bharat evacuation flight of Air India AI 1612 from Manila via Delhi landed at 1:58 a.m. with 149 passengers.
The sixth flight AI 104 from Washington via Delhi reached at 8:22 a.m. with 163 passengers.
The passengers of both the flights were serviced through the fully sanitised international arrivals of the main passenger terminal.
After the completion of immigration and other formalities, the passengers were transported to designated locations in the city for a mandatory 14-day quarantine period as per the rules framed by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Telangana government in coordination with the Ministry of External Affairs, various central agencies and the airport authorities made special arrangements to handle the arrivals as per the standard operating protocol issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
All passengers and aircraft crew were brought out from the aircraft in batches of 20-25 persons. Each passenger was screened by the thermal cameras positioned at the aerobridge exit by airport health officials prior to immigration formalities.
Every baggage was thoroughly sanitised by the disinfection tunnel integrated to the baggage belt.
Glass shields were installed at each of the manned immigration counters, to avoid any personal contact between the passengers and immigration officers.
With the two arrivals on Thursday, the Hyderabad airport has so far handled six evacuation flights from the US, the UK, Kuwait, the UAE and Philippines, repatriating over 1,000 Indian citizens stranded offshore.
The seventh flight from Kuala Lumpur is scheduled to land at Hyderabad airport at 8.15 p.m. on Thursday.
The airport has also handled 12 international departures evacuation flights serving close to 1,000 foreign nationals who were repatriated by various special relief flights to the UK, the UAE, the US, Kenya and Germany.
( With inputs from IANS )