No-fly rules and airlines shut down strands thousands of British travellers

Monday, March 23, 2020

As increasing number of countries are imposing no-fly rules and airlines have shut down operations leaving tens of thousands of British travellers stranded abroad.

From Wednesday 25 March the UAE has announced that all passenger flights will be suspended. The UAE  was an ‘escape route’ for many travellers from Asia, Australia and Africa to the UK. All the scheduled operations from Emirates and Etihad will remain shut down.

There are no seats available for passengers desperate to travel back to the UK and the price of a seat on the only available departure from Dubai to London on Monday is 27,950 dirhams – over £6,500.

Those Emirates passengers with connections booked after the flight ban starts will face being stranded

The stranded travellers are now being advised by the Foreign Office to find suitable accomodation and keep up–to-date with the travel advice and the latest information from the transport providers and local authorities on the departure options.

Be in regular contact with family and friends at home, so they know you are safe and well.

In Peru, the British and Irish travellers are stranded and are waiting for news about the promised rescued flights as the country is under lockdown and official permission is required for any non-local journey.

For repatriation more than 600 travellers have registered, the French and Israeli citizens have been airlifted home.

Earlier the UK government has offered the possibility of paying at least US$3,000 for a seat on a crowdfunded  charter flight from the Colombian airline, Avianca.

The British travellers were emailed to say that ‘several repatriation flights’ should operate this week and passengers were asked to pay only £250 after they returned home safely.

Instead of the civilian facilities the flights may depart from military airports.

The British ambassador to Peru, Kate Harrisson tweeted that -We have been working all day on the necessary arrangements with the Peruvian authorities to make the repatriation flights viable as soon as possible.The situation is fast moving but we are making good progress.

In the capital Lima and the tourism hub, Cusco most of the travellers are located and dozens are scattered around a nation which is five times larger than the UK. There is no clarity on how they will reach the departure point.

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