India Gov Gives Permission to Use Chartered Flights for Seafarers
A good news coming for the Indian seafarers worldwide. Chartered flights have been given ok to go permission by the ministry of home affairs. Recently one of the manning companies asked for permission to use chartered lights to make a crew change in South Korea, for which MEA (Ministry of external affairs) asked Ministry of Home Affairs. In an official letter which was issued later says that none of the ministry has any objections of using chartered flights. But the direction clearly says using SOP which was issued by the government. This includes strict sanitization, social distancing and quarantine. This system will allow seafarers to join ship and also to bring back the seafarers who are stranded at sea because of no crew change.
It will be a great relief for sure, and will remove lot of hurdles in crew change. Flights can operate between important ports for crew change like Rotterdam, Singapore, Korea and any middle east ports as well. Indian government for long time already started the crew change on Indian ports. Worldwide lockdown have put crew change in limbo as manning companies find it difficult for crew change.
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