Brits have accused the government of ‘abandoning’ them in the Middle East as passengers on a failed repatriation flight described the evacuation as a ‘total shambles’.
The terrified UK-bound passengers were stranded on the tarmac until 3am on Thursday as the Government-chartered flight was branded a ‘s***show’ after it failed to take off.
The aircraft chartered by the Foreign Office for British nationals being evacuated from Muscat, Oman to the UK was grounded on Wednesday night because the pilot had exceeded his hours and ‘needed to rest’, according to passengers.
The flight eventually took off more than 13 hours later than planned with The Sun reporting that the British ambassador to Oman was forced make a grovelling apology to families on the plane.
Passengers were said to start getting ‘agitated’ and ‘banging windows’ with some having ‘panic attacks’ when it failed to leave to escape the widening Iran war.
One person on board the plane said the evacuation was a ‘total shambles’, reporting checking in for the flight took at least four hours and then they waited on the plane for another 90 minutes before being told the flight was called off.
They said: ‘Due to slow check-in and delays, the pilot had clocked his hours so needed to rest. No consular staff were present airside. They just left us. People started getting very agitated, banging windows, panic attacks’. They branded the entire experience a ‘s***show’.
Another passenger said: ‘We’ve been transferred to a hotel and it’s expected to depart later today. It’s a total farce.’
Frightened holidaymakers and British nationals scramble for flights home. Pictured: Dubai airport this week. Pictured: Passengers wait at Muscat International Airport
People gather on the sides of a road as smoke rises in the background following an explosion in Tehran yesterday
A third described it diplomatically as ‘a very difficult situation for everyone’ especially after ‘a very long day’.
One mother told The Sun: ‘After horrendous stress, sitting on the tarmac in a bus to get on the plane, we were told there was a problem again. The pilot couldn’t fly as he was out of flying hours and needed sleep.
‘We were then put back to the gate and given the option to sleep there for 10 or 12 hours or go to a hotel booked by the Government.’
She added that elderly passengers were ‘incredibly stressed’ while children were ‘tired and crying everywhere’.
The flight was ‘high-priority vulnerable people’, the mother added, saying there was a ‘state of panic, crying and exhaustion after being awake all night waiting for this flight’.
More than 140,000 Britons have registered their presence in the Middle East with the UK government, after the US and Israel launched a large-scale attack on Iran on Saturday morning, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei among those killed.
And Iran has responded by launching retaliatory strikes on US assets and allies across the Gulf region, including in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
It has seen several major tourist and expat hotspots in the country hit, including the iconic Fairmont The Palm hotel and the Burj Al Arab hotel.
Airports across the region were initially closed after Iranian missile and drone attacks, but have now begun to reopen with heavily restricted air traffic.
The attacks forced Dubai airport to close, leaving 20,000 travellers stuck in the UAE and all flights suspended. About half a million passengers per day use airports in Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi, which are vital hubs for travel between Europe and the continents of Asia and Australia.
Frightened holidaymakers and British nationals are now scrambling for flights home as the tensions continue to heighten across the Middle East.
This includes Emma Hudson, 43, who has been stranded in the UAE since Saturday, after her British Airways flight was cancelled.
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Emma Hudson, 43, (pictured) who has been stranded in the UAE since Saturday, after her British Airways flight was cancelled
Ms Hudson along with her husband Paul, 43 and daughter Sadie 14, (pictured)are now stuck in their hotel and are ‘traumatised’ by the constant loud bangs of missiles being intercepted
Ms Hudson said British Airways told her family to the bombed airport to seek help with accommodation whilst the British Embassy just told her to ‘stay inside’ and ask local charities to help with funding. Pictured: Paul and daughter Sadie enjoying their holiday in Dubai
Along with her husband Paul, 43, and daughter Sadie, 14, the family are now stuck in their hotel and are ‘traumatised’ by the constant loud bangs of missiles being intercepted.
She said British Airways told her to go to the bombed airport to seek help with accommodation whilst the British Embassy just told her to ‘stay inside’ and ask local charities to help with funding.
Ms Hudson, from Middlesbrough, said: ‘British Airways and the government have 100% failed their own.
‘The airline told me the only way they can help with accommodation is if I go to the airport and speak to ground staff.
‘I said, “is that a joke?”, the airport has been bombed twice.
‘All the British Embassy said to me was stay indoors.
‘My daughter suffers with anxiety, and she’s been absolutely petrified.
‘We can hear them intercepting missiles, it’s so loud.
‘On Sunday night, we had to go and hide in the basement, it was traumatising.
‘People on social media are trying to say life is normal and nothing has happened, but that’s not true at all.
‘One minute Sadie was swimming with dolphins, and a few hours later, there’s bombs going off.
‘We just feel like we’ve been abandoned.’
She added that her travel insurance company, have said they have been unable to help, as they don’t cover for ‘war’.
The Fairmont Palm hotel in Dubai was hit over the weekend as tourist areas were hit by Iran
Her nephew Keitan is also stranded in Dubai, and did attempt to go to the airport to get help, but says he was immediately escorted out of the building, as staff told him it was unsafe.
The family are now paying £350 a day to stay in the hotel, which Ms Hudson has had to put on her credit card, leaving her nervous about how she will pay for the rest of the trip.
Ms Hudson said that she and her family ‘don’t feel safe’ in the hotel, as they can hear missiles being intercepted constantly.
‘Every morning at 9am there’s a cluster of bombs going off. It’s horrendous,’ Ms Hudson said.
‘Every time I hear the beep of a card machine I jump out of my skin now, thinking it’s a bomb.
‘Someone dropped something on the floor, and my daughter was hysterical.’
British Airways have been approached for comment.
Another couple Sarah Short, 54, and her husband Ed, 58, were on holiday in Dubai when the war broke out on Saturday.
They were meant to return to London the same day but their flight was cancelled and they decided to travel to Muscat when they heard a flight to London would leave on Wednesday.
The couple said they paid £1,500 for a taxi from Dubai to Muscat, driving more than eight hours through the desert on the 300-mile journey.
Asked about the situation at the Muscat airport, Mrs Short said: ‘It was absolute chaos.’
She added: ‘We didn’t know what was going to happen next.
‘There were people who were absolutely in floods of tears, sobbing, shaking.
‘And we were lucky because we were with our friends.’
Self-employed consultants Mrs and Mr Short were able to board a flight home arriving at Heathrow airport on Thursday morning, where were surprised by their family.
Another couple Sarah Short, 54, and her husband Ed, 58, were on holiday in Dubai when the war broke out on Saturday. Self-employed consultants Mrs and Mr Short were able to board a flight home arriving at Heathrow airport on Thursday morning, where were surprised by their family
Ms Short hugs her son Alex as she arrives at Heathrow International Airport from Oman
Waiting for them at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, Mrs Short’s sister, 49-year-old Karen Fenton, said: ‘It was frightening for them but thankfully in the end it all went OK.
‘They’re quite traumatised by the whole experience, they’ve had to spend thousands (of pounds) on this and got three flights cancelled.’
Meanwhile, a father and daughter who landed at Heathrow on Thursday on the British Airways flight from Muscat said the Government must ‘do more’ to help Britons stranded in the region.
The pair, who gave their names only as Roger and Sophie, from Surrey, said they were due to stay in Dubai on holiday until Wednesday, but decided to travel to Muscat when they heard most flights departing from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were being cancelled.
They said they got ‘extremely lucky’, because they had ‘the contacts and the means, the financial means’ to make their way back to England.
Roger said: ‘The only thing we would say, because there’s genuinely terrified people out there with babies, there’s old people, is for the Government to do more.
‘The Government needs to basically help people get to Oman and fly out. It’s as simple as that.
‘We’ve got about four of five people we know now, who are just sat there, not knowing what to do, scared.’
British Airways announced it has scheduled two more commercial flights between Muscat and London Heathrow on Friday and Saturday.
The airline said on its X account that both flights were fully booked.
Muscat has become a key departure point for people to leave the Middle East, with most commercial flights from the UAE cancelled due to airspace restrictions stemming from the conflict.
British Airways, which does not normally serve Oman’s capital city, said it remains unable to operate its scheduled flights from Abu Dhabi, Amman, Bahrain, Doha, Dubai and Tel Aviv.
The UK Foreign Office does not advise against travel to the area where the Muscat airport is located unlike the current guidance for airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Doha, Qatar.
There is not expected to be a large-scale evacuation of the 138,000 British nationals who have registered their presence in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Catriona Mackenzie, who lives in Fakenham, Norfolk, with her partner, has been working as a teacher in Kuwait since October.
Now, due to the conflict in the Middle East, the 53-year-old has been unable to get home.
‘It is just awful. I cannot tell you how scared I am,’ Ms Mackenzie said.
Catriona Mackenzie, who lives in Fakenham, Norfolk, with her partner, has been working as a teacher in Kuwait since October. Now, due to the conflict in the Middle East, the 53-year-old has been unable to get home
‘There are three different sirens. One means get ready, one means you are in immediate danger, and the third means it is over. But they all just sound terrifying.’
She has been woken up to alarms in the middle of the night and recalls hearing a ‘horrendously loud’ sonic boom.
Ms Mackenzie faced difficulties in finding a teaching job in Norfolk, which swayed her to look for work abroad.
Before the war, she was able to travel from Kuwait to Fakenham with ease in the school holidays so that she could see her partner.
‘The reason we go to the Middle East is not because we are greedy. It is because we just want a job. We just want to pay our bills,’ she said.
She is currently exploring avenues to try to get home to Norfolk and unite with her partner, but is struggling to come up with a solution.
In an attempt to get home, she has joined WhatsApp groups to potentially travel to Saudi Arabia to get a flight back to the UK.
‘I do not know whether to get in one of these cars and go to Saudi Arabia or wait. I just do not know what to do,’ Ms Mackenzie said.
‘It is basically survival of the fittest.’
In the meantime, she says she will continue her work as a teacher until she is able to get home.
She added: ‘The sirens were going off while the kids were online. We have been told you have to cut the lesson because the children find it stressful. We find it stressful too,’ she said.
‘Today it has literally been ‘boom, boom, boom’, and about seven sirens have gone off.’
Thousands of Brits are also stuck around the world as they struggle to get flights back home to the UK.
Laura and Paul Webster, from Birmingham, are stuck in Phuket, Thailand and have been told by their travel agent that there are no available flights to get them home during the next two weeks.
The couple, who both work in insurance software, were due to fly with Emirates to Dubai on Wednesday for a three-night stay before taking another flight to Birmingham.
Laura and Paul Webster, from Birmingham, are stuck in Phuket, Thailand and have been told by their travel agent that there are no available flights to get them home during the next two weeks
Mrs Webster, 40, said: ‘We’ve got work, we’ve got kids. We want to get back ASAP.
‘We don’t care if that means four flights.
‘The travel agent said there’s none on their central reservation system.
‘They keep trying to put us on Emirates via Dubai and the flights keep getting cancelled because of the airspace.
‘When we’ve tried to look for flights ourselves, there’s just none.
‘We have been looking at trying to go via Singapore, we looked at Hong Kong.
‘My husband found one via Japan for £10,000 each, which obviously we’re not going to do.
‘Unless you have a direct flight that’s already booked from Bangkok to London, you’re stuffed for two weeks at least.’
Mrs Webster said there are ‘loads of people in our hotel who are all stuck’.
She explained that their travel agent arranged for them to get an extra three nights of accommodation, but then they will ‘have to fend for ourselves’ as ‘you can’t claim for it on insurance, because it’s war’.
She added: ‘It’s just horrible. It’s literally a holiday from hell.
‘We had two days of a nice holiday, and then since Saturday we’ve just had such stress and anxiety of not knowing when you can get home to your kids.’
Emirates has told passengers it is operating ‘a reduced flight schedule until further notice’.
It said passengers transiting in Dubai ‘will only be accepted for travel if their connecting flight is operating’.
Since the war broke out between Iran and the US and Israel on Saturday, more than 140,000 Britons have registered their presence in the Middle East with the UK government.
Airports across the region were initially closed after Iranian missile and drone attacks, but have now begun to reopen with heavily restricted air traffic.
Those eligible for the government flights have been asked to pay for their seat.
Sir Keir Starmer has announced two further Government-chartered flights, after the first Government mercy flight was branded a ‘s***show’ after it failed to take off on Wednesday night.
The aircraft chartered by the Foreign Office for British nationals being evacuated from Muscat, Oman to the UK was grounded because the pilot had exceeded his hours and ‘needed to rest’, according to passengers.
The flight eventually did take off, Sir Keir announced during a press conference on Thursday afternoon.
It came as other European nations such Austria and Spain successfully evacuated its citizens on Wednesday night. In Austria the country’s foreign minister was even waiting to greet passengers. Around 400 Irish citizens also landed home in Dublin from Dubai on Wednesday evening.
Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer, whose portfolio includes the Middle East, told the Commons on Thursday that more flights from the region are actively being scheduled, with 4,000 British nationals arriving in the UK on Wednesday.
Two more British Airways flights will 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.
British Airways has also organised a flight from Muscat to London Heathrow, which is due to depart early today. BA does not normally serve Muscat as part of its schedule.
In a statement, BA said it had scheduled further flights from Muscat to Heathrow on Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7.
But the airline added that all these flights were now fully booked, although BA said it could add additional services ‘if we are able to’.
‘We are constantly reviewing the situation and will continue to do everything we can to support our customers and colleagues in the region and remain in regular contact with them,’ added BA.
More than 2,000 people arrived on flights from the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, with a total of 4,000 coming home from five Middle Eastern nations.
Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer said eight planes had arrived from the Gulf country and more were expected to land throughout Thursday.
Mr Falconer told MPs: ‘Over 2,000 people have arrived in the UK on eight flights from the UAE yesterday. That includes transit passengers and vulnerable people identified through our consular system. We are expecting a further 10 flights today.’
He added British nationals in Oman will be contacted about further flights out of Muscat ‘as they become available’.
He told the Commons today: ‘Following close engagement with Government, British Airways have laid on new flights to Muscat which we anticipate flying every day.
‘We are grateful to British Airways for their efforts. We are also providing UK-supported charter flights out of Muscat.
‘The first of these was delayed yesterday evening due to technical issues at the airport but is scheduled to depart imminently, with further flights planned in the coming days.
‘British nationals in Oman will be contacted about these as they become available.’
And cruise operator MSC Cruises, which is responsible for vessel MSC, has launched its own repatriation flights for stranded passengers.
A spokesperson said: ‘MSC Cruises has been working on the safest and quickest way to repatriate our guests and has taken decisive action to accelerate this by launching a dedicated flight operation that currently includes five charter flights with the first flight planned to depart today, Thursday 5th March.
‘These flights would see close to 1,000 guests leave the region by Saturday.
‘In parallel, MSC Cruises is pursuing every available pathway for the remaining guests – including commercial flights, further charter options and coordinated government-assisted solutions.’
Spain and Austria did successfully get trapped citizens out of the Middle East on Wednesday night.
Spanish nationals boarded a military repatriation flight at an unknown location in Oman on Wednesday.
Yesterday, Austria’s Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger also welcomed passengers for the arrival of a charter plane carrying Austrian nationals evacuated from Muscat at Vienna International Airport.
It comes after the US and Israel intensified their bombing attacks against Iran’s military and security apparatus.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has continued to defend the status of the special relationship with the US after a series of attacks from President Donald Trump.
And Cyprus said that a British presence is ‘the least we expect’ as a warship being readied to protect the British base there is not set to sail until next week.
Sir Keir has told MPs the special relationship with Washington will endure after the US president lashed out at his initial refusal to allow British bases to be used for raids against Iran.
After Mr Trump said the Prime Minister was ‘not Winston Churchill’, Sir Keir said the bond with the US was not about ‘hanging on to President Trump’s latest words’.
He defended his decisions about the use of UK bases, saying the country needs to act ‘with clarity, with purpose, and with a cool head’.
In response to Iran’s retaliatory actions, Sir Keir has given the US permission to use British bases for the limited purpose of attacking missile launchers and infrastructure, but RAF jets have not been involved in striking Iran.
The Government has also been criticised for failing to have enough military assets in the Middle East region after RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was targeted by a drone.
Defence Minister John Healey is in Cyprus today, and a brief new security alert was issued on Thursday morning at the RAF base.
Air defence destroyer HMS Dragon will be sent to the eastern Mediterranean to help protect Cyprus, but the Type 45 warship is not expected to sail until next week.
Sir Keir said Wildcat helicopters with anti-drone capabilities would be on the Mediterranean island this week.
He insisted action had been taken in response to rising tensions in the region before the war broke out.
The Cypriot high commissioner to the UK, Kyriacos Kouros, said the deployment of HMS Dragon was welcome but noted it would take ‘more than a week’ to arrive.
Asked if he thought the UK had acted with sufficient urgency to protect those people who are living in and around the bases, he told Sky News: ‘Already we have the presence of Greek forces on the island. Two frigates arrived, four aircraft arrived, all of them with abilities to combat drones.
‘The French are coming. So… the least we expect is the Britons to also be present since, as I said, we are not only defending Cypriots on the island.’
France has sent its flagship nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle to the region, accompanied by its air wing, and its escorting frigates in response to the strike on RAF Akrotiri.
Other nations, including Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, have also announced plans to deploy assets to protect the island.
