SAS Gulf battle veteran helps rescue terrified British households by airlifting them out of war-torn Dubai for £2,500
An SAS Gulf war veteran is airlifting terrified British holidaymakers out of Dubai at £2,500 a time.
Des Steel, 64, runs an international security company and flies his operatives in and out of the Middle East every day.
Manchester-based Mr Steel is now using his covert ‘fixers’ contacts and drivers to get Brits out of Dubai and safely home.
He has already repatriated 35 people and the last to go, a family of three, paid £2,500 each.
Mr Steel picks up stranded Brits at their hotels and drives them to the borders of Oman or Saudi where they are met by local drivers.
They are then driven to the country’s international airport where tickets have been bought by his fixer.
Des Steel, 64, runs a security company and flies his operatives in and out of the Middle East
Light traffic moves along a road as commuters ride ‘abra’ water taxis in Dubai yesterday
The five-star Palm Jumeirah Fairmont Hotel was hit and set ablaze by an Iranian missile
A patron sits at an otherwise-empty outdoor restaurant in Dubai yesterday
Mr Steel said: ‘If it was me, I’d pour myself a Pina Colada go out onto my hotel balcony and wait for it to blow over which it will.
‘But I understand that people are worried and when rockets are going off around you, you want to get home.
‘I realised I could help by employing the same network I use every day for my security agents.’
Mr Steel says his escape route is very safe and the chances of one of his vehicles being hit by a rogue drone are a million to one.
The cost of each ‘ticket’ home is variable. The biggest expense is for the drivers with some charging more than $1,000 to get a car load of passengers to airports.
Brits taking up his offer pay the standard air fare home with Mr Steel and his fixers taking a cut of the overall price, which works out tens for thousands of pounds cheaper than some holidaymakers have paid to get home.
It comes as Britons trying to escape under-fire Dubai told today of the widespread panic now engulfing airports.
With some 14,000 UK citizens alone having flagged to the authorities that they want to get out of the desert city and other sites across the Middle East, there is now a palpable sense of desperation.
Iran is believed to have fired almost as many drones and missiles at Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, the gulf’s dominant trade and tourism hub, as it has at Israel , with even the iconic Palm Jumeirah hotel in flames.
The Daily Mail spoke today to some of the thousands of stranded tourists and expats trying to escape the warzone that now is Dubai on flights back to Britain.
Among them was Paul Hart who told how he and his wife had been stuck in Dubai since the fighting started – and could not travel to Oman for the British Government‘s repatriation flight.
Dubai residents Kate O’Neill and Eoin Campbell are travelling to the UK on a scheduled break
Sue King, 66, from Newquay was staying with her family in Dubai when the first missiles struck
Passengers in the terminal at Dubai Airport this morning as flights are still being affected
He said: ‘If you travel to Oman you have to go to the border and then get another taxi to take you from the border to the airport.
‘My wife suffers from Crohn’s disease and also has occipital neuralgia, therefore she needs close proximity to toilets and things, so it’s not an option to travel to Oman.
‘My plane was due to depart on February 28. I was actually on board. It was all boarded, and then it came over the airways that “Sorry, the airspace is closed”.
‘So after four hours, we were able to depart the plane. Fortunately, we were able to get a taxi, and fortunately, we were able to return to our original hotel, because the alternative they provided was booked up within seconds.
‘I’ve been in this hotel, I’ve rebooked for four days, and I’ve rebooked for another five days, and I’m fully expecting when my flight, which is due to leave on Monday, it will be cancelled on Saturday, and we will go around the around the loop again, with the prospect of another flight, but BA has got no intention flying people out of Dubai.’
Among them was retiree Sue King, 66, from Newquay, Cornwall, who had been staying with her daughter and family in Dubai when the first wave of missiles and drones from Iran struck.
‘It was very frightening,’ she recalled. ‘We heard the bangs and saw some flashes from interceptions, but luckily my grandchildren are very young, so they didn’t pick up on what was going on.
‘I was originally supposed to fly home on Sunday, but that was never going to happen [after the war began on Saturday].
‘Then I thought that there was a British Airways repatriation flight going from Dubai Airport this morning, so I came down here on the off-chance, but it was cancelled anyway.
‘I’m now on standby for two different Emirates flights to Heathrow, one at 2pm and another at 2am, so I’m just crossing my fingers that I can get on one of them.’
In fact, despite Dubai airport’s live departures board showing Ms King’s ‘cancelled’ British Airways flight, it was never even scheduled, according to a BA spokesman, who said: ‘We aren’t operating from Dubai at the moment.’
