Air India plane sent to rescue Indians stranded in Afghanistan has reached Delhi with 129 passengers safely. Air India aircraft AI244 has brought passengers to Afghanistan at a time when most of the areas except Kabul have been occupied by the Taliban.
Air India officials said the airline has no plans to cancel the Delhi-Kabul-Delhi flight as of now and it is scheduled to operate on Monday as well. At present, Air India is operating flights only between India and Afghanistan. Officials said the airline operated a Delhi-Kabul flight (AI-243) with around 40 passengers on Sunday afternoon.
Officials said the AI-243 flight took off from Delhi at around 1.45 pm (Indian time) and had to travel around the Kabul airport in the skies for about an hour as it did not get permission from Air Traffic Control (ATC) to land. was found. So the normal flight duration of AI-243 on Sunday was about two hours and fifty minutes instead of one hour and forty minutes.
He said it was not clear what was the reason for the delay in getting permission for AI-243 to land. The return flight AI-244 with 129 passengers (Indian time) departed from Kabul airport at around 5.35 pm. He said the airline was closely monitoring the situation and would take appropriate action as required.
India has drawn up a contingency plan to evacuate hundreds of its officers and civilians from Kabul, surrounded by fear and panic, following reports of Taliban fighters entering the outskirts of the Afghan capital. People monitoring the matter said the government would not risk the lives of its employees at the Indian embassy and Indian citizens in Kabul and emergency evacuation plans have already been finalised.
Upon his arrival in Delhi, Afghan MP Abdul Qadir Zazai said that a peace agreement was reached between the Afghan government and the Taliban. It was just a handover process. Now the situation in Kabul is calm. Pakistan is one of the close supporters of the Taliban. My family is still in Kabul.