CHAOTIC scenes unfolded at Islamabad Airport in Pakistan as travellers raced to get home to the UK before yesterday’s 4am ‘red list’ deadline.
People trying desperately to make it home in time to avoid the hotel quarantine recorded footage of the packed terminal, with one would-be traveller in the scrum calling it the “worst experience ever”.
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No temperature checks appear to have been carried out, although passengers needed to show evidence of a negative Covid test.
They’ll also have to take further tests two and eight days after they get home.
But those who made it back to Britain before 4am on Friday won’t have to pay £1,750 to quarantine in a Government-approved hotel.
Instead, they’ll be able to isolate in their own homes.
One family from Buckinghamshire were refused their seats on a flight back to the UK – despite arriving at check in three hours early, the Daily Mail reports.
Imran Khan from Aylesbury was at Lahore Airport for a British Airways flight with nine children, including three babies. A woman in a wheelchair was also with his party.
But the travellers, who had spent £15,000 to return, were told the flight was closed – even though they arrived early.
More than 20 flights are understood to have been chartered to return to the UK from Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore in the past 24 hours.
But thousands remain in Pakistan. It’s reported large groups of British Pakistanis, many from the Greater Manchester area, had flown out for family weddings and now remain trapped.
Yasmin Qureshi, Labour MP for Bolton South East, has called on Boris Johnson to lay on chartered flights.
Pakistan is suffering a surge in infections, and has become one of the countries on the UK’s ‘red list’.
Its spike is being driven by the super-infectious Kent variant.
