Technical issues kept the flight from Oman grounded, but ministers hope it will be able to leave the Middle East on Thursday to get 180 Brits away from the region
The first government evacuation flight for 180 Brits stranded in the Middle East failed to take off as the crisis deepened.
It had been scheduled to depart from Oman’s capital Muscat late on Wednesday – but remained grounded overnight because of technical issues, the Foreign Office said. It is now expected the flight will take off later today.
Keir Starmer had previously promised two more government chartered flights to rescue Brits trapped in the region “in the coming days”.
It comes as the Foreign Office grapples with the largest consular crisis since the Covid pandemic with around 138,000 British nationals registering their presence in the Middle East. The vast majority – 112,000 – are based in the United Arab Emirates.
Most stranded people will be reliant on getting a seat on a commercial flight. The PM told MPs on Wednesday more than 1,000 British nationals arrived back in the UK on commercial flights from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday. Eight more commercial flights were scheduled to leave the UAE on Wednesday.
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Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also met with Emirates and British Airways executives in an effort to ramp-up availability of flights. Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer, who summoned the Iranian ambassador on Wednesday, to condemn Iran’s barrage of attacks, said officials were working around the clock.
Over 4,000 calls have been taken by the department since the conflict erupted at the weekend. The minister said: “It continues to be an extremely challenging and unsettling time for many across the Middle East.
“Today I summoned the Iranian ambassador to condemn Iran’s role in attempting to draw the region into a wider conflict and the threat this presented to the hundreds of thousands of British citizens in the region. We know that airspace closures and restrictions are making it extremely hard for British people to get home. It’s why the government and our embassies are working intensively with airlines, travel companies and regional governments to find safe routes home for people.”
Mr Falconer urged people in the region to continue to follow Foreign Office advice, adding: “Due to the volatility of the situation, circumstances on the ground may remain challenging for some time. We’re working around the clock to ensure British nationals can return home as swiftly and as a safely as possible – that is our priority.”
One 69-year-old pensioner, Shelagh Knight, from Bristol, was among those to be reunited with relatives at Heathrow airport on Wednesday. She had been stranded in Dubai for four days amid the conflict in the Middle East. Ms Knight, who had been out of the UK since November on a birthday trip to New Zealand and Australia, had arrived in Dubai from Malaysia on Saturday on one of the last flights before the airspace closed.
The pensioner, who said she saw missiles flying overhead from the hotel pool, said: “It was the alarms at night that used to really freak us out. I was very scared. I was on my own, but I made some amazing friends. We call ourselves the hopeful survivors.”
Asked about the mood on the plane home, she said: “Very, very quiet, very quiet. No one spoke. And as we started getting closer to London, the noise came up.”
Stephen Knight, 43, Ms Knight’s son, said: “I think it helped that the world was carrying on around her, people going to work and so on. It wasn’t like everyone had to take shelter. But I imagine it was quite scary, with the alarms going and not being able to relax, not having any sort of north star in terms of target flight. She wasn’t booked on a flight. I imagine that was incredibly difficult.”
Lee Smart, 36, and partner Nina Luminati, 35, from Thornton Heath, south London, also arrived back at London Heathrow on Wednesday afternoon having spent the night before their flight sleeping on chairs in Dubai airport. They were travelling back from a wedding in India when they became stranded in the UAE while waiting for their connecting flight to the UK on Saturday.
Mr Smart said: “We were advised by our hotel to get to the airport yesterday morning and then it was just a bit of carnage. I think many hotels told people the same thing. Maybe they were trying to get people out. So some people got on the first repatriation flights, we managed to get on those because we were at the back of the queue. It was pretty calm in the city, despite everything that was going on. I think the UAE government did an amazing job to be honest.”