The first flight to repatriate stranded Indian nationals under the massive ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ took off from Kerala’s Kochi airport to Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

The Air India Express IX419 will return to Kochi at 9.40 pm with 179 passengers.

With Indians stranded in the Middle East to be evacuated from Thursday, elaborate safety measures have been put in place at Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL).

Around four lakh Indians in the Gulf region have registered with the Indian missions to return to India. They include those who have either lost their jobs due to the global lockdown and those whose contracts were over or those who have no jobs. Also, there were women who were pregnant.

Earlier, it was reported that Air India’s flight from Delhi to Singapore at 11.15 pm today would be the first to ferry back stranded Indians from abroad amidst the Coronavirus-induced lockdown.

However, the Indian High Commissioner of Singapore today informed that the first of the nearly 20 special flights will operate on Friday from Singapore and will evacuate 240 Indians from the city-state.

Prior to the Delhi-Singapore flight, it was Air India’s Delhi to San Francisco flight that was supposed to take off first for the grand mission at 3.30 am on Wednesday. The second flight was scheduled to depart at 6.30 am on Wednesday from Mumbai to London.

But the repatriation flights could not be operated on Wednesday as the crew members’ COVID-19 tests were not done on time, senior airline officials were quoted as saying by PTI.

While the flight to London is now scheduled to leave from Mumbai at 6.30 am on Friday, the flight to San Francisco will leave at 3.30 am on Friday.

The COVID-19 tests for pilots and cabin crew members were not done on time and as a result, both the flights were postponed by 48 hours, officials said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy’s INS Jalashwa reached the Male port in Maldives on Thursday under its ‘Operation Samudra Setu’ to evacuate Indian citizens stranded there amid the lockdown. Naval ships Jalashwa and Magar are enroute to the port of Male to evacuate people from May 8.

The evacuation operation will be conducted in two phases, first to Kochi (Kerala) and second to Thoothukudi (Tamil Nadu), Indian envoy to Maldives Sunjay Sudhir said. He also expressed his gratitude to the Indian Navy to launch ‘Operation Samudra Setu’ to evacuate around 2000 Indians from Maldives.

The Government has announced 64 repatriation flights between May 7 and May 13 to bring nearly 15,000 Indian nationals from 12 countries in the biggest evacuation exercise in world history.

Overall, more than 190,000 Indian nationals, who would have to pay a one-way ferry service charge, are expected to be brought back in the airlift operation that might last couple of weeks or even more.

These special flights would be operated by Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express to repatriate Indians from 12 countries — the UAE, the UK, the US, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman.

The Government is also deploying a raft of Indian naval ships to undertake the massive exercise. A total of 14 warships have been readied for evacuating Indian citizens from Gulf and other countries amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, said Indian Navy officials on Tuesday.

The Government had on Monday said it will facilitate the return of Indian nationals stranded abroad on compelling grounds in a phased manner from May 7.