A probe into difficulties involving chartering aircraft to evacuate Britons from violence-torn Libya has been ordered by foreign secretary William Hague.
The first flight chartered by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was delayed yesterday due to a technical fault at Gatwick. Others are due to fly to the Libyan capital of Tripoli as the first aircraft was due back in Gatwick from Tripoli this morning.
Around 300 UK nationals are believed to be in Tripoli, while some 170 more – mainly oil workers – are in remote desert camps at risk of attack as violence continues.
Speaking yesterday, Hague said: “Given today’s difficulties with reliably chartering private planes, I will establish a review, directly reporting to ministers, into the FCO’s longstanding arrangements for aircraft evacuations. We need to know whether today was a coincidental series of unavoidable setbacks, or a systemic flaw.”
He added: “We can confirm that we are currently assisting the majority of British nationals at the airport to board a chartered plane that has become available in Tripoli. This is being facilitated by our team on the ground.”
British Airways and Bmi cancelled flights in and out of Tripoli for the last two days. BA will not operate its daily service today (Thursday) and a decision from Bmi is pending.
Specialist charter company Air Charter Service obtained one of only two landing permits out of 457 issued on Tuesday to fly almost 200 Turkish people out of Libya to Antalya. Commercial jets director Matt Purton said permits for four more flights had been obtained for services yesterday (Wednesday).
“Across our worldwide offices we have bookings in place for more than 3,000 people and are just waiting on those permits,” he said. “We are pushing these through diplomatic channels as this appears to be the only way at the moment. Following the violent protesting in Egypt we have helped evacuate more than 2,000 foreign nationals on chartered flights so far.
“As with the situation there, we are looking to take many people out of Libya to nearby safer havens such as southern Europe or the Middle East, and to continue their travel from there. Some are flying as far as the States and Asia though. We’re just here to help get as many people out of the affected areas as we can, and hopefully these protests will end soon.”