At Bhopal businessman took social distancing to the next level when he hired a 180-seater A320 plane of a private carrier to ferry four family members to New Delhi.
According to reports, the man, a liquor baron, is said to have booked the entire flight for his family to avoid the crowd at the airport and in-flight amid the coronavirus scare.
The plane landed in Delhi on Monday, May 25, carrying his daughter, her two children and house help who were reportedly stuck in Bhopal since the last two months due to the nationwide lockdown imposed to curb coronavirus.
‘The A320 180-seater plane arrived here on May 25 to carry four members of a family, probably due to the coronavirus scare. It was chartered by someone and there was no medical emergency,’ said an airline official, reported LiveMint.
One of the officials of the Raja Bhoj Airport said that even though the movement of private chartered flights is going on, this incident grabbed attention because a bigger plane was hired, reported The Hindu
Spilling details about the incident, he said that the flight touched down in Bhopal from New Delhi around 10.30 a.m. carrying only the crew and took off around 11.30 a.m with the four individuals.
According to aviation experts, the cost of hiring an Airbus-320 is about ₹20 lakh.
The incident is in stark contrast to the events making headlines amid the coronavirus lockdown. Tens of thousands of migrant workers in the country who have been hard hit due to the virus outbreak are resorting to walking or cycling hundreds of kilometres in a desperate attempt to reach native states, to their families.
These workers are taking on such an arduous journey in the summer heat, without access to food and water.
The most tragic part of the entire migrant crisis is that labourers are losing lives, instead of COVID-19, they are dying from exhaustion, hunger or accidents at a distance just short of reaching their destination.
