IndiGo on Wednesday announced a 20-day suspension of a few flights to mainland China and Hong Kong from February 1 in wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
In a statement, an airline spokesperson said that after carefully assessing the current coronavirus situation in China, IndiGo had taken certain safety measures for its customers, crew and staff.
“Due to China travel restrictions, we have seen a high number of cancellations from China on our Delhi-Chengdu route and vice-versa. Therefore, we are suspending our flights between Delhi and Chengdu from February 1 until February 20. We are also suspending our Bengaluru-Hong Kong flight effective February 1,” the spokesperson said.
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IndiGo said these were purely temporary and precautionary measures. “We understand that these measures will cause inconvenience to our customers and we will be refunding the full amount to the impacted passengers,” the spokesperson said.
The airline said it was in close touch with the relevant government authorities and thanked partners in China for the help that they had extended so far.
“For now, we will continue to operate our Kolkata–Guangzhou flight, which we are monitoring on a daily basis. And for our operating crew, we are ensuring that they return to India on the inbound flights without any layover in China,” the spokesperson informed.
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Meanwhile, Air India has cancelled its Mumbai-Dehi-Shanghai service (AI 348 and 349) between January 31 and February 14.