Coronavirus outbreak: UAE to stop issuing new visas from March 17

Coronavirus shuts traffic on India's busiest international route

The coronavirus crisis will hit traffic on India's busiest international route as United Arab Emirates will stop issuing fresh visas from March 17. The decision does not impact existing visas.
 
Air India, IndiGo and Vistara are cancelling flights to Dubai following the decision. 
 
Over 11 million passengers flew between India and the UAE in 2019 - and the West Asian country is India's largest air travel market. Dubai is number one destination for Indians with over 500 weekly flights to/from India.
 

Indian government has already asked Indians to avoid all non essential travel while UAE government too has issued an advisory to its citizens to refrain from travelling from India.

 
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait too have suspended all flights while Qatar has banned entry to Indians. This too has resulted in flight suspension to these countries.
 
In a statement IndiGo said will be cancelling some of its flights to Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi from March 17, until the travel restrictions are lifted. "We regret the inconvenience caused to our customers, and will be refunding the full amount to the impacted passengers," it said.
 
“There is temporary capacity rationalisation in domestic as well as international network due to drop in demand. We have waived off cancellation charges for all domestic tickets booked on or before  March 01,  and for all international tickets booked on or before March 12," a Vistara spokesperson said.