British passengers marooned for days in SA plane

Three British nationals have been marooned for two days in a small aircraft at an airport in South Africa because of new travel restrictions imposed by the government to stop the spread of Coronavirus.

Pilot Julian Storey, who was taking four tourists on a trip around Africa, told the BBC the plane had been given permission to land at Lanseria Airport near Johannesburg by South Africa’s Department of Transport.

He said their trip had been cut short because of the spread of Coronavirus on the continent – they had been intending to head to Zanzibar, but the Tanzanian archipelago confirmed its first case this week.

So after visiting South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and most recently Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, they decided to go to Johannesburg and then get connecting flights back to Europe on Wednesday night.

After landing at Lanseria on Wednesday morning, things initially seemed fine, Mr Storey said.

“We passed the health check… then when we got to passport control they denied us entry [as] a few hours earlier the South African government issued a directive that banned entry to the country for nationals of certain countries,” he told BBC Newsday.

Two of the passengers had no problems - those with Irish and South African passports - but Mr Storey said he and and the other two on board were refused because they held British passports, despite the fact that they had all been travelling in low-risk countries.

Initially it looked like we would be able to stay in the immigration hall, but the immigration people got police to effectively intimidate us and force us back to the aircraft, and we have basically been living in a small aircraft since.

"The problem we have now is that a relatively small private aircraft and 27 African countries have closed their borders, we don’t have the range to fly to any other country which is safe, which has not closed its borders. So we can’t get entry into South Africa and we can’t fly anywhere else."

There is also huge disruption reported on Friday at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, where passengers from high-risk areas are not being allowed to disembark.

According to the news site IOL, 14 flights have been grounded

Airport spokesperson Betty Maloka said the flights would be sent back to their countries of origin with the foreign nationals on board, IOL reports.