Chief  Secretary Rajeev Ranjan, on Wednesday, wrote a letter to the Ministry of Civil Aviation stating that the State government had decided to remove the restriction on domestic flights operations in Tamil Nadu. However, the restriction on international flights will continue.

“The  Government  of  Tamil  Nadu  has  now  decided  to  lift  the  restriction  n  number of inter-state and intra-state domestic flights  operations in respect to all airports in Tamil Nadu”, said the Chief Secretary, in the letter.

Following the lockdown announcement,  the State government had imposed restrictions on   domestic flight service in Tamil Nadu and as norms were relaxed, the number of flights operated from Chennai Airport increased from 50 to 100.   However, as S Sreekumar, Airport Director, Chennai, had requested the State government to lift the restriction on operation of flights and with the  Civil Aviation Ministry also requesting the Tamil Nadu government to lift the restrictions, the decision to remove restrictions was taken, added Chief Secretary.

“We  have  received  the  Government Order but increasing the movement of flights is completely in the hands of airlines. We cannot look only at Chennai airport and all the airports  across the country need to be considered”, Sreekumar, told DT Next, who also added that he expects  the  flight numbers to increase gradually in a month.

The Centre, meanwhile, issued new guidelines for international arrivals amid the spread of mutant variants of coronavirus in many countries and these will come into force  from February 22