ZULKHIS Abdul Jalil came to know in the nick of time that a special flight would depart New Delhi for Kuala Lumpur last night.

The 52-year-old’s earlier attempt to leave India ended in him being stranded in Bangalore on Tuesday as India enforced travel restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19.

“I wanted to leave as soon as possible, so I booked an IndiGo flight via Bangalore. But my connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur was cancelled. I came back to New Delhi and approached the high commission for help,” he told Bernama.

Luckily for him – and many other Malaysians stranded in New Delhi, Jaipur and Amritsar – the high commission was registering passengers for a special AirAsia flight.

Jaspreet Kaur and her mother-in-law, Amarjet Kaur, abruptly ended their Amritsar trip in Punjab and sought information from the Malaysian mission.

“We rushed to New Delhi when we learnt that things were getting worse. Our scheduled AirAsia flight was cancelled on Tuesday night, so we are lucky to be returning to Malaysia,” said Jaspreet.

Airlines have stopped flights between India and Malaysia since Tuesday afternoon after New Delhi announced restrictions on international travel in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Chinniah P. Arumugam, 65, said his group of 19 Malaysians were booked on a Malindo flight.

After it was cancelled, they bought Malaysia Airlines tickets, only to be told that the national carrier’s services, too, have been suspended.

“We originally planned to go back on March 21, but we understood things were bad. We just wanted to get back to Malaysia,” said Chinniah, looking relaxed after he and his group’s return flight was confirmed.

The high commission was yesterday in touch with 230 Malaysians seeking to leave India, but many could not make it to New Delhi to board the special flight, which took off with 111 passengers about 11pm.

AirAsia also operated an evacuation flight from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh state with 24 passengers.

The low-cost airline earlier yesterday flew 405 Indian passengers from Kuala Lumpur to Visakhapatnam and New Delhi before taking the stranded Malaysians home.

High commissioner Hidayat Abdul Hamid said Malaysians still in India can fly home via other routes, including Singapore.

“Malaysians in India are being asked to register themselves with the diplomatic missions in New Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai so we can help them better and assist in evacuations.”

As of yesterday, about 150 Malaysians were stuck in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, and more than 50 wanted to leave Chennai. – Bernama, March 19, 2020.