After repatriation flights’ announcement, aviation min’s site crashes due to “unprecedented traffic”

PTI, May 6, 2020, 2:34 PM IST

New Delhi: A day after the Indian government’s announcement that Air India would operate 64 flights between May 7 and May 13 to repatriate around 15,000 Indians stranded in 12 countries, the website of the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA) crashed on Wednesday afternoon.

“The MOCA website is down due to unprecedented traffic. Team NIC (National Informatics Centre) is working on it. Details regarding evacuation flights will be put up on the Air India website soon. Kindly check there directly. Our apologies for the inconvenience caused,” the ministry said on Twitter at 12.22 PM on Wednesday.

India has been under lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of COVID-19. All scheduled commercial passenger flights have been suspended for this period. Consequently, thousands of Indian citizens are stranded abroad.

Cargo flights and special flights approved by the aviation regulator DGCA are allowed to operate during the lockdown period.

The aforementioned 64 repatriation flights would be conducted by Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express to repatriate Indians from 12 countries — the UAE, the UK, the USA, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.