Recommendation 4

HM Government Acknowledged

bring home British travellers. But, as noted above, while charters were the most prominent element of our response, it would not have been possible to return all British nationals travelling overseas at the start of the crisis unless we had worked to keep commercial routes open. The decision to work with airlines reflected: • The fact that demand far exceeded our delivery capacity: repatriating the 1.3 million British nationals who have returned since the beginning of the crisis would have required over 4000 charter flights. A dual approach allowed us to organise charter flights where they were most needed; • Our assessment that if the Government undercut commercial airlines, commercial traffic risked stopping—exacerbating the problems faced by British nationals around the world; and • The dynamic situation in which a number of airlines and air-links were able to restart as a result of FCDO lobbying; To aid this the Foreign Secretary made over 60 calls to counterparts across the globe to lobby for continued air-links. Other ministers did likewise. The Government also made a sustained effort to organise commercial flights, get permissions where required, lobby for airlines to put on more flights, keep prices down and ensure they provided timely refunds. As part of this, on 30 March, the Foreign Secretary and Transport Secretary signed a Memorandum of Understanding with 14 airlines to keep routes open and to fly hundreds of thousands of British nationals back home. Senior FCDO officials, along with officials from DfT and CAA, were in regular contact with domestic and international airlines, setting up a dedicated cross-government team to manage these relationships. Heads of Missions from across the FCDO’s overseas network supported this through discussions with senior representatives from key international airlines. Examples of where this approach helped include: • Encouraging coordination between Air New Zealand and British Airways to keep a route open from New Zealand that resulted in the return of over 1,500 passengers after 21 April, with an affordable long-haul ticket price; • Successful lobbying of Qatar Airways, Etihad and Emirates to reopen routes from Australia to the UK; • Lobbying of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and Qatar to extend commercial flights from Pakistan, including at reduced cost; • Work with Ethiopian Airlines to maintain African routes; • Work with Cathy Pacific to help open routes from across the wider Asia Pacific region via Hong Kong; and • Work with international partners to keep Doha Airport open, allowing more than 59,000 British travellers to transit through Qatar in March and April. In some limited instances the FCDO did run some charter flights when commercial flights were available e.g. from New Zealand and Pakistan. This was based on a range of local factors including the number of vulnerable British travellers and the reliability of commercial options. For New Zealand, the Foreign Secretary agreed to run HMG–facilitated charters alongside existing commercial flights in order to bring home a large number of vulnerable British travellers who were unable to wait for the return of commercial flights. For Pakistan we ran 21 charter flights from three cities. Prior to this, a number of passengers faced complications where their flights were cancelled and then relisted at a far higher price by the airline. Running charters encouraged PIA to maintain its commercial operations, providing more stable and competitive fares. But it also illustrated the drawbacks in running charter flights where commercial options were available. PIA reduced the cost of their fares to make them more affordable, in some cases offering cheaper flights than those of our charters, leading to cancellations and empty seats on our flights and an increased number of refund requests—a problem also faced by other comparator countries. This challenged our ability to assess future demand and diverted our resources from helping those in need elsewhere in the world. funding options. This loan could cover essential costs including the cheapest one-way ticket to the UK as well as food and accommodation until the flight departed. Anyone who took out an emergency loan or received their ticket on the basis of an undertaking to repay (UTR) was able to pay back the money once they got home. Loans are due to be repaid six months after the individual has returned home. Flexible repayment schemes are available to enable them to do that. All loans are interest free.