The airports in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh will not handle any domestic flights on Monday as the state government planned to postpone the opening of flight services to Tuesday.
"It has been a long day of hard negotiations with various state govts to recommence civil aviation operations in the country. Except Andhra Pradesh which will start on May 26 and West Bengal on May 28, domestic flights will recommence across the country from tomorrow," Union Minister for Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted.
"As per request of the state govt, operations in Andhra Pradesh will recommence on a limited scale from May 26," he added.
Even from Tuesday, officials said that the Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada airports will only be handling 20 percent of the flights they used to operate before the lockdown was implemented.
The state government said that all passengers who land in Andhra Pradesh will be tested. It also issued guidelines which stated that passengers landing from Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Gujarat and Rajasthan must undergo seven days of institutional quarantine, while remaining passengers will have to complete a mandatory 14-day home quarantine.
Domestic flight services are resuming on Monday after around two months of suspension amid the nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19.
A day before resumption of domestic commercial passenger flights across India, multiple meetings were held at the Civil Aviation Ministry among various stakeholders as states expressed their reluctance to deal with so many incoming flyers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Hyderabad airport will deal with only 30 domestic flights per day from Monday, government officials said, adding that 50 percent of these will be departures and remaining would be arrivals.
Indian airlines, who had opened their bookings on domestic services two to three days ago, will have to cancel a significant number of flights to these cities, where the central government curtailed operations on Sunday.
The Mumbai airport, India's second busiest airport, will handle only 50 flights per day from Monday, said officials, adding that all other airports in Maharashtra will deal with just one-third of the pre-lockdown domestic air traffic.
International commercial passenger flight services remain suspended in India.
PTI inputs