A couple who arrived back in the UK on the first chartered flight from the Middle East said they sheltered in a car park beneath their hotel in Dubai.
The first UK-chartered repatriation flight of British nationals took off Muscat, the capital of Oman shortly after 2pm UK time on Thursday, landing in London in the early hours of Friday.
Thousands of British nationals are stranded in the Middle East after US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted retaliatory strikes across the region.
The Titan Airways flight had been delayed by hours, taking off later than expected, due to what the Foreign Office confirmed to be “technical issues” and was mostly carrying families with young children.
Amelia Reid and Samuel Sharp travelled to Dubai for a long weekend, arriving last Friday, and by Saturday evening they were sheltering under their hotel.
They had travelled for more than 40 hours by the time they touched down at Stansted, where they were greeted by Ms Reid’s parents and their dog Penny.
Mr Sharp said: “Saturday we ended up sleeping in a car park in the basement of the hotel with about 100 other people, after the alarms went off on our phones.
“Didn’t get told if it was safe to go up or not, just went up for breakfast and I think we heard a massive bang after that, so it’s just on edge, on edge for four days.”
Ms Reid, who had been travelling in a wheelchair, said: “We left Dubai yesterday lunchtime, went straight to the Oman border, and went on a coach all the way to Muscat airport in the hope we’d get on the government plane.”
She explained that after arriving at Muscat airport and boarding the chartered flight on Wednesday evening, they were told they would not be taking off because the pilot was out of hours.
Another man, who wished to remain nameless, described the “terrible” wait for the plane to take off on Wednesday evening, before the delay to Thursday afternoon.
He, his wife and young child spent 36 hours in Muscat airport, after fleeing Dubai last weekend.
He said: “To be honest, UAE (United Arab Emirates) government has been doing very good with the interception (of missiles) and making people safe, but it’s just that I thought it’s not worth any of this, even if something minor happens, especially for the family, it’s not good.”
He drove 300 miles from Dubai to Oman earlier this week.
The man continued: “I think today was better, but the day before was very terrible. We took almost four hours for check-in. And then after that, we were told we can’t fly because pilot is on overtime, so we had to go back to the hotel.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer issued an update on the Middle East conflict at a press conference in Downing Street. Credit: PA
More than 140,000 Britons have registered their presence in the Middle East with the Foreign Office and 4,000 have returned home.
Muscat has emerged as a key location for people wanting to leave the Middle East.
The Foreign Office does not advise against travel to the area where the capital’s airport is located, unlike the current advice for airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha.
Muscat can be reached by road from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi with journeys of about 300 miles.
Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street on Thursday, Starmer said: “This is a huge undertaking. It’s one of the biggest operations of its kind. Many times bigger than the evacuation from Afghanistan. It’s not going to happen overnight. But we will not stop until our people are safe.”
He added that more than 4,000 people have arrived in the UK on commercial flights from the UAE.
“We will lay on additional charter flights in the coming day,” Starmer said before adding that British Airways will be scheduling daily flights from Oman.
Fazal Chowdhury at London Stansted Airport following his return to the UK on the Government’s first charter flight Credit: Paul Marriott/PA
Fazal Chowdhury, who described himself as a “risk averse kind of guy” also touched down on the flight with his wife.
He complimented the UK government’s work despite the long delay.
Mr Chowdhury, who had lived in Dubai for the last three years, said: “There was a bit of room for improvement because there were some technical issues with the flight, so we were in the airport for 20 hours, but I don’t think there’s much to complain about.
“To be honest, they were all working really hard and they were all really sincere, the whole team there were really good.
“The ambassador came and explained what happened, she was really good. We’re all here now, it was a bit of a shambles on the night when we thought we were going to get on the flight and then we were sort of trapped on buses and had to go back.”
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Two more commercial British Airways flights are due to take passengers from Muscat to London Heathrow on Friday and Saturday.
Qatar Airways announced it would operate “a limited number of relief flights” to European cities on Thursday, but confirmed most flights would remain suspended due to the ongoing closure of Qatari airspace.
Services from Muscat would depart for London Heathrow as well as Madrid, Rome, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Another flight would depart from Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, to Frankfurt.
“Passengers are kindly requested not to proceed to the airport unless they have received an official notification from Qatar Airways for these flights,” the airline wrote in a statement on X.
A limited number of commercial flights have been leaving the UAE, with more than 300 people returning to Scotland from Dubai via the Emirates airline on Wednesday night.
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