Face of Nation International : The government has announced a £75m airlift operation to rescue hundreds of thousands of British nationals stranded abroad because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced a mixture of charter flights to “priority countries” and affordable seats on commercial airlines from countries where they are still running. After mounting criticism of the Foreign Office approach, Raab announced the government had reached an agreement 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.
“Under the arrangements we are putting in place, we will target flights from a range of priority countries starting this week,” he said at the daily Downing Street press briefing.
He told travellers not to wait and to book their tickets now even if it meant changing carrier, suggesting the government would subsidise flights. (Source : The Guardian News – UK)
