India opens for foreigners quietly: Korean flight first to enter India with 135 foreign professionals on Friday

NEW DELHI: Without much ado, an Asiana Airlines flight – a Korean carrier with about 135 Korean business professionals, engineers, and executives onboard entered the Indian airspace and landed at the IGI Airport in New Delhi.

There were about 35 Indians too in the same chartered flight that took off from Incheon airport in Korea on June 19. The very next day, the same flight flew back to Incheon with about 90 Korean nationals and 150 Indians.  

The Indian government has for the first time ever since the international borders were closed for scheduled international passenger airlines and visas were canceled to check the spread of imported coronavirus, accorded permission to international airlines to ferry in foreigners.  

This special Asiana Airlines flight was not part of the ongoing Vande Bharat Mission, which is being primarily undertaken by India’s national carrier Air India to bring back Indians from across the world.

Since March 25, no scheduled passenger flight had been allowed to fly in foreigners in India except for diplomats/UN officials or those on special missions.   

None amongst the Civil Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri, officials spokesperson of Ministry of External Affairs Anurag Srivastava or Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA) made this unusual development public on the social media platform, which they are used to, for the reasons best known to them or the government of India.

All of them are quite used to putting every bit of development related to their domain work area on their twitter handles on an almost daily basis.

When contacted, Euy Don Park, President, Korean Association in India, the community body that represents all 15,000 Korean nationals staying in India confirmed about this flight.

“An Asiana Airlines flight with Koreans as well as Indians on board landed in New Delhi from Incheon on June 19. The next day, the same flight took off from New Delhi airport to Incheon Koreans but mostly the passengers were Indians. Since Indian is slowly opening, the international flights too are being allowed on case to case basis,” Park added. 

When contacted the officials at the embassy of the Republic of Korea in New Delhi, they said that there were requests from the India-based Korean companies like Hyundai, Samsung, and others for their executives and engineers stuck in Korea who wanted to join work in India.

The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) accumulated these requested and shared with the embassy, which further took up the matter with the Indian foreign affairs ministry for the necessary approvals for operating Asiana Airlines flight between Incheon and New Delhi on June 19 and 20.  

Yoo Chang-Ho Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs, Korean Embassy to India, said, “Korea and India are looking to get economic cooperation back on track as soon as possible. This is why both are allowing business communities to get back to each other’s countries so that the economies can start moving again.”

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