Passengers describe ‘surreal’ scramble to reach first government flight out of Middle East

BBC:

British nationals who landed in the UK on the first government flight out of the Middle East since the widespread conflict began six days ago have told how they scrambled across borders to get on the plane.

The flight, originally scheduled to leave Oman’s capital Muscat on Wednesday night, had its departure delayed by nearly 24 hours following technical issues.

It eventually took off on Thursday night local time, before landing at London’s Stansted Airport at 00:53 GMT on Friday.

More than 140,000 Britons in the region have registered their presence with the UK’s Foreign Office, after US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted retaliatory strikes by Iran across the region.

Fazal Chowdhury, a Dubai resident, has described the experience as “a little bit surreal to be honest”, explaining he and his wife decided to drive to the Omani capital as soon as they saw the initial reports of attacks on the city.

Dubai has seen several direct strikes from Iran since Saturday, with damage reported at Dubai International Airport and several luxury hotels.

“We just made a run for it straight away, checked into a hotel in Muscat, and there we were just waiting,” Chowdhury told the BBC after landing at Stansted on Friday.

Oman is situated across the Gulf of Oman from southern Iran but is about 1,200 miles (1,900km) away from Tehran so is further from the Iranian capital than most of the Middle East nations.

Its capital city Muscat is just a 280-mile drive from the UAE’s biggest city Dubai, where many British tourists and expats are currently based.

Chowdhury and his wife registered with the Foreign Office as soon as the details of the government chartered flight were released, he said, adding they were “very lucky” to get a seat onboard.

Though he said the flight delay had been described as a “bit of a shambles”, he told the BBC that he thought it had been managed well overall and the communication from the UK government had been “really good”.