The second flight of the Indian Air Force C-17 from Budapest landed the Hindan Air Base at Ghaziabad at 5:15 am today. 210 passengers, mostly students, were on board. The flight is part of the Govt of India’s massive airlift effort named Op Ganga. Till now, the IAF has brought back a total of 410 passengers from Bucharest and Budapest. The Raksha Rajya Mantri, Shri Ajay Bhatt, was present at the tarmac to welcome back the passengers who were evacuated from Ukraine to neighbouring countries.
Two more IAF flights are enroute from Poland and Romania, and are expected to land at Hindan in the coming few hours.
The IAF C-17 heavy lift transport aircraft have been extensively used for evacuation of stranded citizens of India in the recent past, most notably from Afghanistan. These airplanes have also been utilised to transport oxygen containers in large quantities during the COVID-19 outbreak last year.
Further, 3 C-17 flights evacuated 630 passengers.
Further, 7 flights of C-17 have evacuated 1428 passengers and taken 9.7 tonnes of relief material.
Further, Three C-17 heavy lift transport aircraft of the IAF, which had taken off yesterday from the Hindan air base, landed back at Hindan today morning. These flights evacuated 629 Indian nationals from Romania, Slovakia and Poland. These flights also carried 16.5 tonnes of relief load from India to these countries.
Till date the IAF has flown 10 sorties to bring back 2056 passengers, while taking 26 tonnes of relief load to these countries, as part of Op Ganga.
