Govt bans meal services on flights shorter than 2 hours due to COVID surge

New Delhi: Amid a meteoric rise in Covid-19 cases across the country, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has banned in-flight meals of short-duration flights. The Ministry on Monday said meals will not be served in flights of duration lesser than 2 hours.

The MoCA order comes on a day when India once again reported a record rise in fresh cases dislodging Brazil from the unenviable position of the second worst-hit nation in the pandemic. 

The ministry considering the increasing threat of COVID-19 and its variants decided to reviewed onboard meal services in the domestic flight operations.

The airlines, operating flights on domestic sectors may provide may serve pre-packed snacks, meals, pre-packed beverages as per the policy of the airlines, wherein the flight duration is two hours or more. In all classes, tray set-up, plates and cutlery will be completely disposable with no re-use, or cleaned and disinfected rotables will be used, the circular noted.

In all classes, tea, coffee, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage services will be in disposable cans, containers, bottles, glasses. There will be no pouring service and beverages will be served in single-use disposable units. All used disposable and rotable meal trays, plates, cutleries, beverages bottles, cans, glasses will be disposed off in the trash bags, carts by the crew, at the end of the meal service.

The crew shall wear a fresh set of gloves for every meal, beverage service. The passengers would be informed of the above practices for strict compliance before the start of catering services by way of passenger announcements. The servicing of inflight meals to be staggered among the adjacent seats as far as possible, it further said. 

While domestic flights continue to operate, international scheduled commercial passenger flight services remain banned since March 2020. However, India continues to operate international flights under bilateral air bubble agreements with 30 countries.

On Monday, India witnessed fresh 1,68,912 new cases of infection taking the overall tally of cases to 1.35 crore, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW). This is the sixth day when the fresh daily count of Covid cases have exceeded the 1-lakh mark amid mass gatherings at political rallies and religious festivals.  

The overall fatalities from the virus accumulated to 1,70,179 with 904 more people succumbing to the disease in the last 24 hours, as per official data released Monday.