An Air India special charter flight named AIC24WC (Air India Champions 24 World Cup) has landed in Barbados to ferry back the Indian squad stuck in the Caribbean nation due to Hurricane Beryl.
Though the team was expected to fly back home in a chartered flight on Tuesday evening (landing on Wednesday morning), the flight had to be postponed due to weather-related issues.
The Air India flight which took off from New Jersey on Tuesday landed in Barbados around 2 am local time. It will take off from Barbados with the players around 6 am local time and land on Thursday morning if there are no further delays in their departure.
Though the BCCI has not yet commented on the depature, it has put up a video of the trophy with the caption "it is coming home."
It's coming home 🏆#TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/Pxx4KGASb8
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 3, 2024
The players are set to be felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but the schedule of that event has not yet been finalised.
The Grantley Adams International Airport here resumed its operations on Tuesday after a three-day shutdown following the arrival of the cyclonic storm. Though the airport remained unaffected due to the storm, the flight services were cancelled.
The airport was reopened only after the all-clear given by Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams.
Though Hurricane Beryl has now become a Category 4 storm moving down from Category 5 and is headed towards Jamaica, Barbados was still likely to experience excessive rainfall and gusty winds as a result of a tropical wave expected to affect the island. The system is separate and distinct from Hurricane Beryl which passed the island late Sunday into Monday.
