Reuters – Britain shuts operations of direct passenger flights to and from the United Arab Emirates from Friday, shutting down the world’s busiest international airline route from Dubai to London.
Britain stated it was including the United Arab Emirates, Burundi, and Rwanda in its coronavirus travel ban list due to worries over the spread of a more contagious and potentially vaccine-resistant COVID-19 variant first identified in South Africa.
“This means individuals who have been in or transited through these nations will probably be denied entry, besides British, Irish and third nation nationals with residence rights who should self-isolate for ten days at residence,” U.K. Transport Minister Grant Shapps mentioned on Twitter on Thursday.
Emirates and Etihad Airways mentioned on their web sites they would suspend all U.K. passenger flights from 1300 GMT on Friday when the ban takes effect.
The U.K. transport department advised British nationals currently within the United Arab Emirates to make use of indirect commercial airline routes if they wished to return to Britain.
Dubai to London was the world’s busiest international route in January with 190,365 scheduled seats over the month, in accordance with airline data provider OAG.
Emirates and Etihad normally carry huge numbers of passengers connecting from Britain to locations like Australia via their airport hubs, meaning the decision to cancel these flights will have far-reaching implications.
The Australian government stated it can add more charter flights from Britain if needed because of the Emirates and Etihad cancellations.
Eran Ben-Avraham, an Australian stranded in Britain due to strict limits on the number of arrivals in Australia, stated his options for getting home have been continually shrinking.
“At the moment it is only giving us three options of flying Qatar, ANA or Singapore Airlines,” he advised the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Every day it’s making it more difficult to get home. The flights back are wherever from like 4,000 pounds ($5,487).”
