Coronavirus: One-third of the passengers weren't provided masks, gloves, student tweets her experience from London to Bengaluru

Landscape architecture student Meghana Manjunath, 26, live-tweeted her experience travelling to Bengaluru on Sunday, right up till her arrival in the city in the wee hours on Monday. She spoke to DH an hour after reaching her hotel, about her journey and pointed out that not everyone in the flight was provided masks and face shields.

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The passengers were given a form to fill which gave them an option of choosing between budget hotels, three-star hotels and five-star hotels, and single or double occupancy. "The latter is helpful for those travelling with a family. I'm staying in a single occupancy room," she said, adding that there was no mention of government quarantine facilities like hostels available for them.

"I was trying not to focus on the negatives in my tweets but one of the issues was that one third of the flight passengers weren't provided any personal protective equipment like masks, gloves or face shields. I only realised that the other passengers had gotten them when one of the flight passengers posted it on one of the WhatsApp groups wearing them," Meghana said.

The last 10-15 rows of passengers weren't provided any protective gear on. "Maybe they (authorities) ran out by the time they reached the last of the passengers. I'm not sure if any of them were given a hair cap either," she said.

Manjunath was studying at the University of Sheffield in London and was planning to come back to India around the time when lockdown began. "I would've had to pay for my accommodation till September if I had been stranded there any longer. I wanted to avoid that and come back home. I came back two days after my accommodation period got over," she said.

Since she is in strict quarantine, she waved at her family from her bus as her family wanted to see her from outside the hotel. "I saw them from the other side of the gate but didn't talk to them," she said.

Confusion over tickets

Since it was the first repatriation flight, the authorities are still ironing out issues. "There was a lot of confusion on who had gotten the tickets and who had not. The High Commission of India had made two different lists on who had gotten their tickets. One is a shortlist and the other is a waitlist of Air India passengers in batches of 30. Some people did not receive confirmation, some were pushed back from the waitlist," she said.

"It was fine for people staying in London. But for those in, let's say, Scotland, which is 8-10 hours by train, it is difficult if they have no prior notice of whether they have secured a ticket or not," she added.