‘Irish exodus’ as Covid travel ban sees hundreds scramble for last flight from Heathrow to Dublin

Countries from Czech Republic to Canada impose new restrictions in bid to stop mutant strain spreading

Hundreds of air passengers across Europe have been caught up in travel disruption after an expanding list of countries banned flights from the UK in a bid to stop a mutant strain of coronavirus spreading.

At London’s Heathrow Airport, crowds of people hoping to catch the final flight of the evening to Dublin were held in the terminal after reports it had been overbooked.

One traveller described an “exodus of Irish” as people rushed to beat a 48-hour ban on flights from Britain to Ireland, which came into force at midnight on Sunday.

Rachael Scully, who was among those trying to reach the Irish capital on the 8.55pm Aer Lingus flight, tweeted photos of crowds of passengers waiting in the terminal.

At around 9.30pm BA staff informed passengers that special arrangements had been made with officials in Ireland to ensure those left waiting were flown to Dublin on another aircraft.

“Irish gov have given the green light and we’ve been processed for a BA flight. Due to land at 23:45. Woops of joy once the news got out. A Christmas miracle,” she wrote.

A spokesperson for BA said: “Our teams looked after customers while we urgently looked into alternative arrangements to get them on their way to Dublin as quickly as possible.”

In Berlin, passengers arriving on the last flight from the UK were said to have been held at passport control with non-German citizens without a negative Covid-19 test told to return to the UK.

Journalist Tom Nuttall, who was onboard the flight, tweeted with 15 minutes to go until the midnight deadline that passengers were growing anxious that they would not be able to enter Germany before the ban came into force.

“Looks like legal residents of Berlin may be allowed to go home, possibly with a test requirement to follow,” he wrote. “But we're still not allowed to leave the airport. Non-residents, including people in transit, will have to spend the night in the terminal and get tested in the morning.”

A similar situation was reported in Hannover where German newspaper Bild said passengers arriving from the UK – some with young children – were left sleeping in the airport until they could be processed on Monday.

Around a dozen European countries have now banned UK passengers flights from landing, including France, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The Czech Republic has imposed stricter quarantine measures for people arriving from Britain and Spain will continue to require a negative PCR test rather than imposing an outright ban.

Further afield, Turkey, Morocco, Canada and Kuwait are among the countries implementing a temporary travel ban affecting flights from the UK.