Thursday 04 / July / 2024
Muscat: An Indian national returning to Oman has said he had to pay about four times the price of a regular plane ticket to come back to the country.
Since September 1, 2021, the ban on passengers entering Oman from certain countries has been lifted, enabling people, some of whom have been away for months, to return, leading to a huge increase in demand, while there are still only a limited number of seats on flights.
As a consequence, passengers like Sanjay Shukla have to pay steep amounts to return to Oman. Shukla arrived on one of the first flights arriving in Muscat from Chennai on September 1, paying a total of more than OMR 260 for his journey.
“I am from Mumbai, but I could not get a flight out of there as all the planes were fully booked,” he said. “After searching for a full three days, I decided to see what alternate routes were available, because I needed to come back to Oman urgently, and had no other options available to me.
“I therefore booked a connecting flight from Chennai,” he added. “The leg from Chennai to Oman cost me more than OMR230, which is far more than what I would normally pay for, because a ticket from Mumbai to Muscat is ordinarily only about OMR55 on a budget airline, or about OMR100 on a regular flight.”
Shukla went to India on 10 April to see his family, 16 days before the entry ban on passengers flying from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh came into effect. He’d been trawling social media and news websites for updates over the lifting of the new measures, and was very relieved when it finally came through in the final week of August.
“I want to thank the Oman government for allowing us to come back, because many of us have our jobs at stake, which we use to care for our families back home,” he said.
“My job requires going out of the office, because I work in sales, but my company had allowed people to work remotely if their work could be done that way.”
In keeping with regulations issued by the Oman government, Shukla needed to take a PCR test at least three days prior to his departure and upload the results along with his vaccine certificates and flight details to the eMushrif app, all of which also needed to be shown to airport authorities in India before boarding his flight.
“The procedures are pretty straightforward if you know what documents you need,” he said. “It is the same in Oman, where you are asked once again for your documents and then go through the e-gates. I am really glad to come back here, but to be honest, I already miss my family.”
Shukla’s company does provide him money to buy air tickets for his annual leave, but feels he might only be compensated a portion of what he shelled out to come back.
“My company was telling us they would provide us ticket money, but only after the 20th of September, because the prices right now are really high,” he said. “Even when I booked my Chennai flight, there were only one or two vacant seats remaining so I chose to book them before they sold out, because it was very important that I return.”
