PANJIM/DABOLIM: After a long wait and amid Omicron Scare, Goa welcomed the first charter tourists of this ongoing tourist season in state on Wednesday Morning. Altogether 159 passengers including an infant from Almaty, Kazakhstan landed Wednesday morning at Goa International Airport.
The flight was operated by Air Asthana to Goa. Caper Travels had arranged this first charter trip from Kazakhstan and the second flight will arrive Today (Thursday, December 16), and the third flight will arrive on Saturday, December 18.
“SCAT airlines are also going to operate from Almaty and we have given slots to Rossiya airlines. Currently, 40 slots to these three airlines have been given. Slowly AAI is expecting that the number of charters would increase in days to come. As confidence grows more slots will be asked and today’s first flight with 159 passengers shows a good sign that charter tourism would gradually pick up,” said Malik.
Commenting on the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on testing and surveillance of incoming international passengers, especially for those countries in the “at-risk”category, Malik said, “At Goa airport, all SoP’s and protocols stipulated by State and central government are being followed. As far as international tourism is concerned it’s a good sign that after two years tourism in Goa is reviving itself. Also, as far as air bubble agreement (allowing all eligible passengers to travel between the two countries) is concerned, we started with one flight and now Air Arabia is operating five flights a week. Two flights are going to going are to UK one flight to Dubai. This shows that things are looking very promising and we are hopeful that by end of December things will further change with more international passengers coming in,” said Malik.
He said that the domestic operations is concerned, Goa airport has already surpassed the pre-COVID level long back. “Last Sunday we handled about 95 flights which are much more than pre-COVID level.”
Meanwhile, since this first charter passengers had come from red list country, upon arrival all the passengers were taken to the RTPCR testing facility set up at Dabolim International Airport and all the reports were negative.
