The Bulgarian airline GullivAir will charter a flight to Male to bring back Bulgarian tourists who are stranded in the Maldives after they stopped flights through the Middle East.
This was announced to TravelNews by Radoslava Mincheva from the carrier.
“The flight will be paid for by the Bulgarians there, not by the state”, she specified. It is expected to take place on Sunday after receiving the necessary permits, Mincheva added.
The charter is organized by the tour operator "Fanagoria Travel" and bookings are made through the website fanagoriatravel.com, Kiril Stamov, the company's manager, explained to TravelNews. According to him, the group has already grown to 120 people and is constantly growing. Stamov also recommended that the stranded Bulgarians in Sri Lanka move from Colombo to Male so that they can also be brought back by charter. The plane is an A330-203 with 326 seats on board.
Over 120 Bulgarian tourists who had transfers via Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have been stranded in the Maldives for a week now. Flights from major hubs in the Middle East were blocked after the start of the military conflict. Airports and airspace in the UAE and Qatar were closed.
The state will send another large plane today to bring back Bulgarian citizens from Dubai, the Foreign Ministry also announced to TravelNews. The flight is expected to be operated by the Bulgarian airline Gullivair, which will send its Airbus A330-203 with 326 seats on board.
There are still quite a few individual tourists and groups of about 10 tour operators in Dubai. They should receive notifications about the flight from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the consular service on site. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminds people to monitor their emails and phone applications for contact information.
The organization of the evacuation flights is carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the General Directorate of the “Civil Aviation Administration“.
Source: travelnews.bg