Following the missile strikes across the Middle East, airspace remains severely restricted in the region, with flights completely or partially grounded over Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria, the UAE and Israel.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said British Airways would be putting on daily flights from Oman, and the government will keep working with partners to “increase the speed and capacity of this airlift”, adding additional charter flights would be scheduled in the coming days.<\/p>\n
The people who had arrived back included “vulnerable Brits”, Sir Keir added.<\/p>\n
Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Friday, deputy prime minister David Lammy said 6,500 Britons have returned from the UAE. <\/p>\n
He added the government was “dependent on air space opening up” but they are working with commercial airlines when space does open up to “get people out”. <\/p>\n
“It is our intention and our hope to see more charter flights out of Oman and more commercial flights out of the region over the coming hours and over the coming days,” he said. <\/p>\n
Those eligible for government flights are being asked to pay for seats. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the missile strikes across the Middle East, airspace remains severely restricted in the region, with flights completely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-460380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}