Welcome back: Flight with 168 Japanese professionals onboard lands in India; First since March
NEW DELHI: After a long wait of over five months, the first lot of 168 Japanese executives and engineers including seven Indians employed with various India-based Japanese firms arrived in India on Wednesday evening.
The Japan Airlines 8839 aircraft that flew from Haneda airport was the first non-scheduled passenger charter flight from Japan to enter Indian airspace and land at New Delhi airport on August 5 with Japanese nationals ever since Indian government had banned operation of scheduled domestic and international flights operation in March as one of the measures to check the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.
Closely following is the second JAL flight scheduled to fly an estimated 240 Japanese nationals from Haneda to New Delhi on August 28 subject to approval from Indian aviation authorities.
According to the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCII), that arranged the JAL charter flight about 6,000 more Japanese are waiting to arrive in India as they are the ones who had left for Japan in a phased manner during the lockdown period in India.
JCCII represents 450 Japanese companies in Delhi and NCR towns.
Though India has entered the 3rd phase of Unlock that has been rolled out in the phased manner, and business activities have resumed since then, the Japanese companies were facing problems in resuming full-scale operations in their factories for the want of key management executives and engineers. This senior manpower pool was stuck in Japan following a ban on the international flight operations.
All the Japanese professionals who landed at the New Delhi airport will have to undergo 7-day quarantine in designated facilities like hotels, and rest seven days they will be required to self-quarantine at their homes as per the standard operating procedure (SOPs) laid down by the Indian government.
According to Kenji Sugino, Secretary-General, JCCII, the arrival of Japanese professionals will help Japanese companies to resume their operations to some extent.
“Most of the professionals who have returned to India work with automobile and component manufacturing companies like Suzuki, Denso, Toyota Tsusho, and others. Actually, as per the earlier schedule, about 242 professionals were supposed to come but many had to cancel their trip to India as their respective employer companies did not accord them permission to fly to India because of the Coronavirus outbreak condition here in India,” Sugino told Asian Community News (ACN) Network.
Prior to this Japanese flight, a couple of Korean flights also have landed in India with Korean professionals with the permission of Indian aviation authorities. It was a bid to make the Korean professionals resume work as India opens for business activities after a prolonged lockdown period.
