Emirates flights from Dubai expected to land at Birmingham, Heathrow, Gatwick and Edinburgh Airports today

Thousands more Britons stranded in the Middle East are returning home on Wednesday.

Airlines are beginning to ramp up their flights from the Middle East, and today (Wednesday 4 March) flights from Dubai are expected to land at Birmingham, Heathrow, Gatwick, and Edinburgh Airports.

Emirates is running limited flights from Dubai to the UK while Etihad has two Abu Dhabi departures. Virgin Atlantic will operate a flight from Dubai to London Heathrow today which is scheduled to take off at 11:20am.

British Airways has not restarted its usual flying programme from the region, but will run an evacuation flight to Heathrow from Oman capital Muscat, which it does not usually serve. The UK Government has said it will charter a repatriation flight from Muscat “in the coming days”, but it has been reported there will be no major evacuation of the 130,000 British nationals who have registered their presence in the Middle East.

That means most stranded people are reliant on getting a seat on a commercial flight. The flights taking off from Dubai to the UK today are listed below:

EK39 Birmingham
EK1 London Heathrow
EK3 London Heathrow
EK23 Edinburgh
EK69 London Gatwick

The flight to Birmingham has already taken off from Dubai, and is expected to land past 12pm. Other Emirates flights that have also already taken off from Dubai in the early hours of this morning are a flight to Manchester and London Heathrow.

An Emirates flight from Dubai to Dublin is also scheduled to depart today at 17:35pm.

The conflict between Iran and the US and its allies has caused widespread airspace closures in the Middle East, sparking major disruption to flights. About half a million passengers per day use airports in Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi, which are vital hubs for travel between Europe and the continents of Asia and Australia.

Experts believe it could take weeks to clear the backlog of passengers.