Travel rules to Dubai from India eased: Here are the new requirements

Dubai residence visa holders can now travel from India to Dubai if they have the necessary approval from the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) and can produce negative Covid test results.

These are the only two requirements that travellers must fulfil. Their vaccination status will not be taken into account by airline representatives at check-in counters, the Khaleej Times reported.

The GDRFA is a government entity that regulates the entry and exit of international travellers from Dubai as well as the residency of foreign nationals in the city.

The Dubai government had earlier said that with regard to travel from India, only passengers with a valid residence visa who have received two doses of a UAE-approved vaccine are allowed to travel to Dubai. There are four vaccines approved by the UAE government — Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech, Sputnik V and Oxford-AstraZeneca.

Dubai had last month announced relaxation of travel restrictions from countries, including India. The UAE, in late April, had closed its borders for travellers from India. This had come in the backdrop of the surge in number of Covid-19 cases in India during the second wave of the pandemic.

Responding to a customer on Twitter, an Emirates Airline support executive on Monday tweeted, “Dubai residence visa holders can travel as long as they present a printout of GDRFA approval, a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of departure and a negative Rapid PCR test taken 04 hours prior to travel.”

Hi, Dubai residence visa holders can travel as long as they present a printout of GDRFA approval, a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of departure and a negative Rapid PCR test taken 04 hours prior to travel. Kindly DM us if you have more queries. https://t.co/pPS8nj0zog.

— Emirates Support (@EmiratesSupport) August 9, 2021

“As per instructions issued by civil aviation authorities in Dubai, for passengers to disembark in Dubai, only three documents are required. They need to have a GDRFA approval, negative RT-PCR test result taken 48 hours before departure, and a rapid PCR test result from the airport,” an Air India official in the UAE was quoted as saying by the Khaleej Times.