It’s a balmy 32°C in Goa and droves of Europeans tourists trying to escape temperatures as extreme as -17°C in their hometowns are making a beeline for this seaside state to spend the winter. At least they are trying to.
With heavy snowfall across most of Europe that has led to hundreds of flight cancellations and temporary closures of airports, charter flights from countries like Poland and the UK to Goa have been severely affected.
Many charter flights over the last 48 hours from Europe have been cancelled and though London’s Gatwick and Heathrow airports started operations on Friday, charter flights to Goa are still not taking off as commercial airlines are getting first preference.
With the flights not coming in, many tourists already in Goa were stranded over the last week. On Friday, charter company Thomson diverted an empty plane from Bahrain to take back some of their stranded passengers. In the meantime no charter flights for Goa have taken off from Gatwick and a Monarch flight that was cleared to take off was delayed by more than 10 hours on Saturday. Around six charter flights from Poland have also been cancelled. “Around 15 charters have been cancelled over the last week. With each charter flight bringing in about 350 tourists, we have lost out on the business brought in by around 3,750 tourists just over the last week,” said an official of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa. “Thankfully Russian charters haven’t been affected. Since Goa gets more Russian tourists than any other nationalities, business would have really taken a hit, if those charters were affected,” he added.