Iran evacuation: Mahan Air flight from Iran expects to land in Delhi tonight

A Mahan Air flight from Iran is expected to land in Delhi later tonight with swabs of 300 Indians stranded in Iran, Senior government officials said on Friday.

"It will be a ferry flight of Mahan Air. It will not have any passengers from Iran only swabs of Indians. The return flight will carry back Iranians in India", Arun Kumar, Director General, Directorate General of Civil Aviation said

This is part of the evacuation effort being mounted to get Indians back from Iran. The Mahan Air flight is being allowed in despite Indian banning all flight from Iran a couple of days back.

Hardeep Puri, Minister for Civil Aviation said close to 6.5 lakhs passengers arriving on over 5500 flights had been screened at 30 airports around the country till yesterday.

The decision of the Indian government to introduce universal screening of all international arriving passengers means that it takes an additional 8 to 10 minutes for an arriving passenger to clear all formalities at Indian airports.

Officials said that the decision to fumigate all aircraft took 2 to 3 hours to fumigate the entire aircraft. "Of course the departure of aircraft are getting affected", the official said.

Normally an aircraft departs 45 to 60 minutes after arrival at a city.