A charter flight on Tuesday evening is set to take the Indian team back home from Barbados after their T20 World Cup 2024 triumph.
The development comes after Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said she was hopeful that the airport will become operational in the "next six to 12 hours", after a category 4 hurricane led to a shutdown.
Hurricane Beryl, which hit the island on Sunday evening, ensured that the T20 World Cup-winning squad, its support staff, some BCCI officials and the players' families were left stranded in Barbados for the past two days.
"I don't want to speak in advance of it, but I have literally been in touch with the airport personnel and they're doing their last checks now and we want to resume normal operations as a matter of urgency," Mottley told PTI.
"There are a number of people who were due to leave last night late or today or tomorrow morning. And we want to make sure that we can facilitate those persons, so I would anticipate that within the next six to 12 hours the airport will be open."
The Indian squad could leave Bridgetown at 6pm local time and land in Delhi on Wednesday at 7.45pm IST, according to a source. The players will also meet prime minister Narendra Modi but the schedule of that event has not yet been finalised.
Five of the players - Rinku Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shivam Dube, Khaleel Ahmed and Sanju Samson – have to leave for Zimbabwe for a five-match T20I series. The remainder of the squad for the series departed India earlier on Tuesday.
Barbados has been in lockdown since Sunday evening after Life-threatening winds and storms hit the Island.
"[We have] been working to ensure that everyone is safe in Barbados, Barbadians and all of the visitors, of course, who came for the cricket World Cup," Mottley said. "We were very blessed that the storm did not come on land. The hurricane was 80 miles south of us, which limited the level of damage on shore. But as you can see, infrastructure and coastal assets have been badly damaged.
"It could have been a lot worse, but now is the time to do the recovery and the clean-up."
India have a narrow window to leave Bridgetown as Mottley also said that "we have another hurricane coming on Wednesday".