As many as 97 Russian tourists, the last batch of stranded foreign tourists in Kerala, left for Moscow on Thursday on a chartered flight from the Thiruvananthapuram international airport.
Seven tourists who were brought here by road from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh also boarded the Royal Flight aircraft. The majority of the passengers was women and they had been held up in southern districts since the lockdown began on March 25 and international flights to the country were banned.
All the 104 passengers were subjected to health screening at the airport and only those tested negative were allowed to board the chartered flight.
Two previous attempts to arrange chartered flights to Moscow did not succeed owing to operational reasons. Ratheesh C. Nair, Honorary Counsel of Russia, and Ramesh T.P., Tourist Information Officer and Deputy Director, Marketing, Kerala Tourism, coordinated the travel.
From Kolkata too
The flight left for Kolkata, where another 110 Russian tourists stranded in West Bengal boarded it for the trip to Moscow via Yekaterinburg, Mr. Nair said.
On Wednesday, 103 Keralites stranded in Russia arrived here in the Royal Flight from Moscow. Of them, 80 were students.
