First UK Government Flight Departs Middle East After Delay

A flight chartered by the UK government to bring back some Britons stranded in the Middle East has departed after being delayed.

Problems with getting passengers on board meant the plane, due to leave Oman’s capital Muscat on Wednesday, had remained grounded.

Thousands of British nationals are stuck in the Middle East, after US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted retaliatory strikes by Iran across the region.

Giving an update on the situation on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer confirmed the chartered flight had departed Oman.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel said returning UK nationals was “an enormous exercise and ministers must be honest about all their actions”.

She asked what was being done to get British nationals home and questioned why “Britain was so woefully unprepared” for the war.

More than 130,000 Britons in the region have registered for updates from the UK government.

Sir Keir said more than 4,000 people have arrived back in the UK on commercial flights from the UAE, including “vulnerable Brits”.

A further seven flights are due to leave the UAE for the UK on Thursday, he said, adding that the government will lay on additional charter flights in the coming days.

He said British Airways is putting on daily flights from Oman, and the government will keep working with partners to “increase the speed and capacity of this airlift”.

Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer described the situation as “a consular challenge on a scale not seen since Covid” and said there were “no instant solutions”.

Britons in Oman will be contacted as soon as the additional government-organised flights from Muscat become available, Falconer said.

However, he said commercial flights becoming available were “by far the most likely and the most rapid routes back to the UK”.

In response, the shadow foreign secretary criticised the government’s position on the conflict, calling Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper “weak and feeble”.

Patel said the US, Cyprus, the UAE and Bahrain felt let down by the UK’s lack of involvement.

Cooper had “failed in her duty to stand up for Britain’s place in the world” and had not provided the leadership needed to protect military personnel, British bases and British nationals, she added.

Regarding the delayed flight, Home Office minister Alex Norris earlier told LBC: “It didn’t take off because there are operational reasons… about getting passengers on board, and it wasn’t able to happen in the time that it had to happen.”

Those eligible for government flights are being asked to pay for seats. When announcing the initial flight, the Foreign Office said it would prioritise the most vulnerable people, and that only British nationals, their spouse or partner, and children under 18 would be offered a seat.

Foreign Office officials said 138,000 British nationals in the Gulf had registered their presence, of whom 112,000 were in the United Arab Emirates.

Following the missile strikes across the Middle East, airspace remains severely restricted, with flights completely or partially grounded over Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria, the UAE and Israel.

A passenger on the flight, named Mark, messaged the BBC as it was about to take off. He’s travelling with his young family to London Stansted.

He described the “complete shambles” of Wednesday’s delayed flight – check-in took two hours, and they were stuck on a bus to the plane for another hour with “no communication from the craft or the crew”.

Mark said someone had a panic attack on the bus, and once the doors finally opened, they were told the crew were working out of hours, meaning the flight would not legally be able to reach Cairo.

Britons unable to secure a seat on the charter flight have been looking for alternative ways home.

Sam Sahabandu, 47, from Northamptonshire, who got stuck in Muscat after his flight back to London from Sri Lanka was diverted, was due to be on a Qatar Airways flight to Heathrow on Thursday afternoon local time.

Sahabandu said Muscat Airport appeared “relatively peaceful” despite the disruption, and some other passengers were being routed through other cities such as Rome to get back to the UK.

There were emotional scenes at Edinburgh Airport on Wednesday night as some 300 passengers landed on an Emirates flight from Dubai.

Andrew Crow and Jean Weir, from Glasgow, had checked out of the Fairmont The Palm hotel in Dubai just hours before it was caught in a large explosion on Saturday.

“The flight was a long one on the way back, I can assure you, but we are relieved to be home,” Andrew said.

Victoria Cameron, from Larkhall, had been travelling home from New Zealand via Dubai when flights in the Middle East were grounded.

“The staff said ‘run, run, leave your suitcases’,” she told the BBC. “Our phones were going off, saying ’emergency alert’. We were crying, we were shaking.”

Meanwhile, the UK government continues to set out its wider response to the crisis in the Middle East, including deploying a warship to the area close to Cyprus.

The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon will be sent to the Mediterranean, possibly next week, to bolster defences around a British military base at Akrotiri after it was hit by an Iranian drone.

Source: BBC

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