Air India Express clarifies COVID-19 test requirement for children under 12 flying from India to UAE
Airline says new rule applicable to only kids flying into Sharjah as per latest update
Dubai: Indian carrier Air India Express on Tuesday clarified that children under 12 years flying with the airline from India to the UAE are exempted from mandatory COVID-19 PCR test only if they are landing in Sharjah International Airport.
The clarification comes a day after the airline announced that the negative COVID-19 PCR test certificate was not mandatory for children under 12 years flying into Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah as per travel regulation update posted on its blog.
On its Twitter page, however, the airline had urged passengers to continue checking its blog “often to know the recent updates as it may change accordingly.”
On Tuesday, the airline clarified that only Sharjah had exempted children from the test.
In the latest update on the blog, the airline stated that a valid negative COVID–19 PCR test report from a government-approved laboratory for all passengers above 12 years old is applicable to passengers flying from India to Sharjah.
When contacted, a spokesperson confirmed this to Gulf News.
P.G. Prageesh, chief of Corporate Communications, AIE, said over phone from India: “As per the latest information we received from the authorities, a negative COVID-19 PCR test report is not mandatory for passengers below 12 years in Sharjah. We are awaiting confirmation on this from Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”
However, it emerged that some passengers who had seen Monday’s update on the blog and Twitter account of the airline were stranded in some Indian airports as expressed by them on Twitter.