After 62 days, commercial flight lands at Silchar Airport, DC monitors arrangement

May 26: The nationwide lockdown augmented by the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic also put on hold air travel. It is only after 62 long days that the first commercial flight landed at Silchar airport. FlySpiceJet flight number SG8152 from Delhi airport via Guwahati landed at 1.56 PM at Silchar airport with a total of 44 passengers. Out of the 44 passengers, 28 are from Silchar, 13 from Karimganj and 3 from Hailakandi.

In a bid to ensure smooth running of activities like screening of passengers and sanitisation, Cachar Deputy Commissioner Keerthi Jalli visited Silchar airport at Kumbirgram on Tuesday. Accompanied by ADC Sumit Sattawan, DC Jalli took stock of the arrangements at the airport and held discussions with Airport Director PK Gorai ,Kallol Dhar, AGM (CNS) and other officials regarding the facilities and expressed satisfaction over the developments. She hoped that cohesive efforts by everyone in the midst of COVID-19 shall help to minimise problems and make things better for the people arriving and departing from the airport.

The passengers who arrived by SpiceJet on Tuesday were screened at the health desk which was set up at the airport. Dr Arup Patoa looked after the screening facilities at the airport. After the completion of the screening process and collection of luggage maintaining social distancing, 28 passengers of Cachar District were taken to the quarantine center at National Institute of Technology (NIT) Silchar where their swab samples were also taken. Out of 28 passengers of Cachar district, 4 of them were below 10 years. As such, as per SOP these 4 children along with their parents, a total of 11 persons were sent for home quarantine. Another army jawan was also sent for home quarantine. So a total of 16 out of 28 were kept in NIT Quarantine Centre. This was disclosed by ADC Sumit Sattavan during a media briefing in Silchar on Tuesday.

As per Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), issued by the Assam government, the passengers will have to stay at the quarantine center until their swab results come out to be negative. The passengers of Karimganj and Hailakandi, were taken to their respective districts by bus amidst security, where they will kept at the quarantine center.

However, FlySpiceJet Flight SG8152 was the only airline which came to Silchar on Tuesday. Flights from Kolkata are still not operational. As per reports, flights are supposed to take off from Kolkata for Silchar from 28 May.