Britain’s poor show in rescuing nationals from Libya
By Andrea Wren on Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Libya is in crisis and on the brink of civil war, yet while other nations were quick to begin evacuation of their citizens from the country, it seems the British government has been unable to act in haste.

Britains poor show in rescuing nationals from Libya

Airlines cancel flights

British Airways and British Midland International cancelled flights in and out of Tripoli a few days ago, with around 500 remaining Brits in the country – 170 of these are oil workers dangerously stationed out in desert camps.

Britain slow to rescue citizens

Luckily, after several delays, some of those remaining Brits have now arrived home on a plane owned by BP, with more waiting at the airport to be collected by an RAF aircraft. The situation remains perilous for the stranded oil workers. Why has Britain been so slow in getting its citizens home?

Government blames airlines

David Cameron was reported by the Guardian to blame the airlines, but surely a country with the UK’s resources should be able to action an emergency rescue for what is only a few hundred people? And what of BMI and BA? Should the airlines have cancelled their flights before remaining Britons were evacuated?

Airlines could have done more to help

Clearly, they didn’t feel able to hang around for the last few hundred Brits waiting to depart from an increasingly chaotic airport, and while I don’t know how many of those people are tourists, ex-pats or workers, we rely on airlines to get us out of trouble when it arises – especially if we’ve used those airlines to get into a country.

Government has a responsibility

To be in that situation – knowing that your main hope of getting quickly out of a country tumbling into war has just been kiboshed – must be very frightening indeed. Ultimately though, it’s a government responsibility. Where are they exactly, when you need them?


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4 responses to “Britain’s poor show in rescuing nationals from Libya”

Bignose3559 | 25 February, 2011 at 1:16 pm

I’m sure there are exceptions, but how many of those individuals had gone to Libya for anything other than oodles of tax free pay? How many blind eyes were turned to the nature of the regime, blinded by the ex-pat bubble lifestyle?

All of a sudden, we have a duty to bail out these non-contributors & read their “heart-rending” accounts of how their insulated bubble burst in the Daily Wail. They are perfectly entitled to seek the pot of gold wherever they want to, just don’t come crying when the reasons for their danger money suddenly rear up & bite them on the backside.

I exclude from this comment all of those who were in Libya for humanitarian, rather than pocket-lining, reasons…

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Hal Peat | 25 February, 2011 at 3:51 pm

Maybe Mr. Cameron was trying to ignore the facts on the ground as they were unfolding a little longer than he should have. In other words, being the opposite of proactive. He very well knew that Libya had little or no chance of making any reasonably peaceful regime transition as happened in Egypt – in other words, he had weeks and weeks to be making contingency evacuation plans.

I think Travel-rants does a great job insofar as you don’t avoid and/or deny the facts on the ground yourself in a crisis when it comes to covering the impact of wider social and political events in a country and how those are impacting aspects of the local travel industry. This is much more pragmatic than all the blather about how “there’s really no violence here” or “let’s have a nice social media chat about the crisis on the TB site” which is all that other sites like Worldhum or Tnooz ever come forward with.

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Nick | 26 February, 2011 at 1:39 pm

I think BBC said it well.

While we are waiting for the rescue flight to land the daily flight has just landed with 22 people on board a 160 seat plane. The government felt in the case of Libya, like Tunisia and Egypt is that people would use these flights to get home rather than wait at the airport 3 days for them to act.
The Government had just not understood the large difference between the other countries and Libya.

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Andrea Wren | 27 February, 2011 at 9:40 am

@Bignose3559

Thanks for your comment. I agree that there would likely have been many Brits who were enjoying their incomes in Libya whilst ignoring its regime. However, many weren’t and it’s impossible to discriminate and say that we can only rescue the ‘worthy’ ones. The British government have been exceedingly shoddy, regardless of how deserving of rescue some of the British people in Libya may be perceived by some to be.

@Hal Peat

Thanks for commenting. Yes – I think you’re right, Mr Cameron would have had plenty of time to make plans. Why he chose to ignore the situation I don’t know – maybe the government hadn’t anticipated that the airlines would take leave? I gather from your remarks also that you feel this post is reflective of the way Travel Rants deals more directly with issues, so thanks for that too.

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