A second Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) evacuation flight carrying people fleeing the expanding US-Iran conflict landed at London Gatwick at 00:30 GMT on 8 March. The Titan Airways A321 departed Muscat, Oman, with a brief technical stop in Cairo and brought home around 240 British nationals, taking the total number repatriated this week to more than 6,700. Priority seats went to families with young children, medical cases and business travellers whose employers had activated crisis protocols. Many passengers had originally been on holiday or on short-term assignments in the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain but found themselves stranded after regional carriers curtailed schedules and UK airlines altered routings. Border Force officers processed arrivals using temporary e-gate lanes set up in Gatwick’s South Terminal. Officials confirmed that evacuees with long-expired UK passports were admitted under paragraph 1(3) of the Immigration Act 1971, but urged them to renew documents before onward travel. The Home Office deployed additional biometric-enrolment kiosks so that those holding expired BRPs could generate emergency eVisas on the spot. Corporate travel managers welcomed the operation but warned of continuing disruption. “Several oil-and-gas contractors have 90-day rotation staff stuck in Doha because their replacement crews can’t secure insurance,” said Sarah Lowe of HRG Travel. Freight forwarders also report capacity crunches as evacuation charters displace belly-hold cargo. The FCDO says further flights will run “as long as demand persists” and urged remaining UK nationals in the region to register via the ‘Locate’ service. Commercial carriers will honour unused return tickets once restrictions lift, but analysts believe ad-hoc repatriations could cost the government up to £15 million if the crisis drags on.
Source: The Independent
