Vistara reviews advisory, suspends international flight operations from March 23-April 15

Vistara on Thursday temporarily suspended its international flight operations from March 23 to April 15 in wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

In a previous advisory issued on Wednesday, the airline suspended its international operations from March 20-31.

However, in a revised advisory today, the airline extended the suspension of its international flight operations up to April 15.

The advisory also stated that the airline will operate seven international flights between March 20-22 to/from Kathmandu (Nepal) and Singapore, in the interest of customer convenience.

The Central government today announced that no scheduled international commercial passenger flights will be allowed to land in India from March 22 for one week in view of coronavirus pandemic.

"No scheduled international commercial passenger flights shall be allowed to land in India from March 22 for one week," said the government in a statement.

This comes after the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said that the global air transport industry could see 113 billion dollars of revenue losses for the passenger business in 2020 as novel coronavirus snowballs into a public health emergency.

Meanwhile, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) said Asian airlines are facing revenue shortfalls of over 60 billion dollars this year as a result of sharp falls in demand which have already forced the grounding of over half the fleet.

By the same token, it said, many of the one million workers are unable to work because of drastic reductions in operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of positive cases of COVID19 in India stands at 167 (including 25 foreigners), 4 deaths (1 each) in Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab, and Maharashtra.