Anger over shortage of rescue flights back to Britain

UK TRAVELLERS stranded overseas have expressed anger at the amount of time and money it is taking them to get home, with one woman spending “every waking moment” trying to return.

A £75m operation to charter flights from destinations where commercial routes have been severed due to the coronavirus pandemic was launched by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office last week, but demand for seats appears to be outstripping supply.

Two rescue flights chartered by the Government were due to repatriate British nationals from the Philippines yesterday.

Further flights will operate this week from India, South Africa and Nepal.

Shekhar Sharma, a 42-year-old banker from London, has lived in the UK for the last 16 years but is stranded in India after visiting his parents. He has registered for a rescue flight from Delhi to London and paid the £581 fee, but has been told that only gets him a spot on a waiting list.

He said: “The UK seems to be the last country to be trying to bring people back home.”

Meanwhile, the family of a “scared” 20-year-old British woman stranded in Honduras because of the coronavirus pandemic is calling on the Government to bring her home.

Freya Madeley, 20, is trying to return from a rural area of the Central American country, where she had been volunteering as an English teacher.

It is understood the British Embassy has secured a seat on a Swiss flight to Zurich on Thursday and will provide her with an official safe passage letter to get to the airport.

But her family, from Gloucestershire, say the five-hour taxi ride to the capital city Tegucigalpa is too dangerous.