An Air India flight with around 200 Indians from Sharjah will arrive in Lucknow on Saturday, an official said.

“An Air India flight is likely to arrive in Lucknow from Sharjah between 8.00 pm and 8.30 pm on Saturday. The tentative number of passengers arriving in Lucknow is 200,” AK Sharma, the director of Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport was quoted by news agency PTI as saying.

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The Centre on Monday had announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7. Under ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ 64 ferry services are to be operated from May 7 to May 13 and is billed as one of the biggest air evacuation missions to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals from 12 countries who have been stranded due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Meanwhile the national carrier Air India’s first standalone evacuation flight under the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ landed at the national capital’s IGI Airport from Singapore on Friday.

The AI381 flight landed at around 11.50 am with 234 passengers, who were stranded in the foreign land due to the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

The flight had taken off from the IGI Airport at around 11.20 am on Thursday night.

Two Air India flights arrived in Kerala on Thursday night. The first flight landed at Kochi from Abu Dhabi with 177 passengers around 10.05 pm, while the second flight at Kozhikode from Dubai with 182 passengers.

Besides Air India, the national carrier’s subsidiary Air India Express has also operated flights under the evacuation programme undertaken by the government.

India imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country, grounding all international flights since mid-March.

Under the repatriation plan, the government will be facilitating the return of Indian nationals stranded abroad on compelling grounds in a phased manner.

Overall, more than 190,000 Indian nationals, who would have to pay a one-way ferry service charge, are expected to be brought back in the airlift operation that might last couple of weeks or even more.

These special flights would be operated by Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express to repatriate Indians from 12 countries — the UAE, the UK, the US, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman.

The Government is also deploying a raft of Indian naval ships to undertake the massive exercise. A total of 14 warships have been readied for evacuating Indian citizens from Gulf and other countries amidst the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Indian Navy’s INS Jalashwa had reached the Male port in Maldives on Thursday under its ‘Operation Samudra Setu’ to evacuate Indian citizens stranded there amid the lockdown.