In a first, Air India will operate a direct London-Kochi-London flight service from August 28 till&nbspSeptember 27 as part of the Vande Bharat Mission. There will be a flight connecting London and&nbspKochi directly, each Friday and Sunday. 

&ldquoFlight AI 1186 from London will land at Kochi at 0015 on Sundays and depart to London at 1220 on the same day and the second service will land at Kochi at 0400 on Fridays and depart at 0600 on the same day,&rdquo the Kochi airport said in a statement.

Until now, Air India had been operating direct evacuation flights from London to Delhi and Mumbai, later connecting with feeder flights to Kochi. However, these layovers in Delhi/Mumbai airports were creating chances of added exposure to the virus of travelling vulnerable groups. Thus, the airlines decided to add a direct repatriation flight to Kochi.

This will be the first time a direct flight will link Kochi to a major European city and the airport&nbspauthorities and looking to optimise on the situation for the future.

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The Malayali community in London along with people from other parts of South-India seem certainly confident, now that the layovers have been taken aback.

The move comes after Air India had announced that it will start 14 more flights under Vande Bharat&nbspMission to bring back Indians stuck in the United Kingdom.

The list of scheduled flights featured several cities like Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Cochin, Hyderabad, Goa, Kolkata, Vijayawada, and Amritsar, apart from Delhi and Mumbai. About 10.5 lakh Indians have been evacuated from different countries with the Vande Bharat Mission to date.