The Hindu : Contingency plan to evacuate Indians

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 19, 2003

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Contingency plan to evacuate Indians

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI MARCH 18. The Government has drawn up a contingency plan to evacuate over 50,000 Indians within a week from Kuwait should the need arise in the event of a U.S.-led war on Iraq, the Civil Aviation Minister, Shahnawaz Hussain, has said .

Speaking at the inauguration of a duty free shopping festival at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, he said that while immediate evacuation was not needed, arrangements are in place to evacuate people at a very short notice.

Should the war start, it would spell trouble for India by causing huge financial losses to the civil aviation and tourism sectors. The air space of three airports in the Middle East -- Dammam, Bahrain and Kuwait - would be closed leading to suspension of all commercial flights.

Since Air- India operates eight flights to Dammam, six to Bahrain and seven to Kuwait, and Indian Airlines runs seven flights to Bahrain and Kuwait, the cumulative loss from suspension of operations was expected to be Rs. 75 crores.

Mr. Hussain said that due to the creation of the "war zone'', all 13 flights per week of Air- India bound for the U.S., three to Frankfurt and one to London would have to take a diversion, which would add over an hour to the travel time. Avoiding flying over Iraq and Iran they will have to take a detour via Iran which would lead to an additional fuel cost of between Rs. 10 lakhs and Rs. 15 lakhs per flight.

The Minister said since Air- India had been forced to avoid Pakistani air space due to the diplomatic stand-off, all its flights to Europe and North America were already taking an hour extra for covering the route, and this, he said, was causing a loss of Rs. 40 crore per year to Air India.

The Iraq war would only make matters worse and increase the loss by another Rs. 100 crore per year.

``If the war escalates and the entire air space over Iran is also closed, then Air India will be forced to fly to USA and Europe via Jeddah and the flying time would then increase by about 2 hours and 15 minutes.'' The Minister said this would further increase operation costs and force the authorities to terminate these flights in Mumbai as the aircraft cannot fly for more than 11 hours at a stretch.

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