NEW DELHI, Oct 17: Air India has announced additional flights between Delhi and Frankfurt under a revised air bubble agreement with Germany. The agreement was earlier suspended due to a dispute over the volume of traffic permitted under the pact. Air India has opened bookings for 26 October to 28 March. A Twitter post said flyers can book their ticket on the airline website, call centres or booking offices.

Germany was flying more Lufthansa flights to India than allowed under the air bubble. When India asked Lufthansa to curtail its schedule, it cancelled all flights to India till October 20. Air India then cancelled all its flights to Frankfurt till October 14.

India has also signed an air bubble arrangement with Ukraine, taking the number of countries under the country-to-country arrangement to 17. The air bubble with Ukraine is valid till 30 November this year. Further details are yet to be worked out. Ukraine is a tourist attraction.

The Government already had formalized air bubble arrangements with 16 other countries. They are Afghanistan, Bahrain, Germany, France, Canada, Oman, Iraq, Japan, Maldives, Nigeria, Qatar, UAE, Kenya, Bhutan, UK, USA.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister for Civil Aviation, said the Government is in discussion with Italy, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and some others too for similar arrangements.

Air bubble agreement is a limited bilateral air corridor established between two countries in view of the coronavirus restrictions on international flights. There is a total ban on scheduled international flights in order to prevent coronavirus transmission. However, India had undertaken a large number of repatriation flights to bring back stranded Indians from several countries like the UAE, US, UK, Iran, China. Air bubbles have further eased air travel.