Air India International Flights: Within the first two hours after Air India opened bookings for around 300 flights to various countries including the USA and the UK under phase-3 of the Vande Bharat Mission on Friday, the airline received "overwhelming" demand from travellers as the national carrier got six crore hits on its website.

On Saturday morning, the airline updated the numbers and informed passengers that over 22,000 tickets have been sold till 8 AM. The website experienced 6-7 times more activity.

The national carrier opened its bookings at 5 PM and it posted the following on Twitter at 6.08 PM on Friday: "Demand for seats from India on flights planned under Mission Vande Bharat-3 is overwhelming. Sectors/ Flights are being opened in a systematic manner for booking, on the website."

Air India will operate around 300 flights to Europe, Australia, Canada, the USA, the UK and Africa between June 10 and July 1 during phase 3 of Vande Bharat Mission.

The national carrier posted at 8.20 PM on Friday on Twitter: "Bookings for select destinations in USA, Canada, UK & Europe etc under Phase3 of #MissionVandeBharat opened at 5 pm today. Around 60 million hits received till 7 pm on our website & 1700 seats sold through the website alone in 2 hrs. Bookings continue & tickets are being issued."

While scheduled domestic passenger flights resumed on May 25 after a gap of two months, scheduled international passenger flights continue to remain suspended in India.

While scheduled domestic passenger flights resumed on May 25 after a gap of two months, scheduled international passenger flights continue to remain suspended in India.

Under the Vande Bharat Mission, Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express started operating international flights from May 7 onwards to repatriate stranded Indians from abroad. The first phase was from May 7 to May 16, following which the second phase began.

Between May 7 and June 1, Air India group has operated a total of 423 inbound international flights under the mission, bringing 58,867 Indian citizens back to the country.