West Bengal Lockdown: Now permission to fly flights in these 6 states!

Kolkata Airport on Monday decided to start operating outbound flights to six COVID hotspots in the country.

As per the announcement, Kolkata Airport will now operate flights to Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Nagpur, and Ahmedabad.

However, the ban on in-flights going to Kolkata from these hotspots will remain unchanged. Approval has been received from the Airport Authority because the airlines decided to operate aircraft arriving at Kolkata from non-COVID hotspots.

The airport last week extended the suspension of flights to Kolkata from 31 metros with high prevalence of COVID-19 cases till 31 August.

Earlier, the temporary ban on the arrival of flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Nagpur and Ahmedabad to Kolkata Airport was extended till August 15.

Alapan Bandyopadhyay, Home Secretary, West Bengal, Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, said in a letter that the suspension of flights going from six cities to Kolkata will continue till August 31, 2020.

The ban on flights from the six metros was first imposed from July 6 for 14 days. It was initially extended to 31 July and then later to 15 August and now to 31 August.

The development comes at a time when 3,066 new cases of coronovirus infection were reported in the state on Sunday, which increased to 1,16498.