Foreign Office to bring 3,000 stranded UK nationals back from India
The Foreign Office has chartered 12 more flights to bring around 3,000 UK nationals back from India as repatriation efforts continue in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new flights come in addition to seven that have already been set up, meaning a total number of 5,000 UK citizens will be brought home from India.
Lord Tariq Ahmad, minister for south Asia at the FCO, said: “This is a huge and complex operation which also involves working with the Indian Government to enable people to move within India to get on these flights.
“We are doing all we can to get thousands of British travellers in India home”.
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In total, the FCO has thus far brought around 1.3m people who were trapped overseas back to the UK since the crisis began.
There are currently no commercial ways of leaving India, with both the country’s land and airspace borders closed until 14 April.
Last month foreign secretary Dominic Raab announced a £75m airlift programme to rescue the hundreds of thousands of UK nationals stuck in overseas countries.
A deal has been struck with British Airways, Virgin, easyJet, Jet2 and Titan to help with the “unprecedented” operation to repatriate people in countries where commercial airlines were no longer flying.