Domestic airline SpiceJet will operate a special evacuation flight on Monday to the Hungarian capital Budapest to bring home Indian nationals stranded in war-torn Ukraine.
The airline will use the Boeing 737 Max aircraft for the operation. Flight number SG 9521 will depart from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport at 5 pm today and reach Budapest at 1.25 am on March 1. The return flight SG 9522 will fly from Budapest at 11.35 pm on March 1 and reach New Delhi at 8.15 am on March 2. The flight will operate via Kutaisi, Georgia, the airlines said.
The airline is in discussion with the authorities on operating more evacuation flights to bring home Indians from Ukraine.
Around 15,000 Indians are still waiting to be evacuated from the war zone, a Deccan Herald report said.
The country’s largest carrier IndiGo is also operating one flight each to Budapest and Bucharest (Romania) through Istanbul to bring back stranded Indians from Ukraine.
The flight for Budapest, which has already taken off from the country, will leave Istanbul on Monday and return to Delhi on Tuesday.
The second flight will fly from Istanbul to Bucharest on Monday and also return to Delhi on Tuesday, PTI reported quoting an airline official.
Tata Group-led Air India is also flying evacuation flights from Bucharest and Budapest. The first evacuation flight, AI1944, brought back 219 people from Ukraine via Bucharest to Mumbai on Saturday evening, while the second evacuation flight reached New Delhi at around 2.45 am on Sunday with 250 Indian nationals.
Air India's third evacuation flight AI1940 arrived from Budapest with 240 Indian nationals at the Delhi airport around 9.20 am on Sunday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting today and it was decided that Union ministers – Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh -- will be travelling to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation mission 'Operation Ganga'.
