Yorkshire couple stranded in Peru almost separated due to lack of space on repatriation flight back to UK

Two repatriation flights from Lima landed at Heathrow airport on Monday morning.

However, British citizens on the flight described a "scramble" to the airport and difficulties with passenger lists leaving couples at risk of split up due to lack of space.

Danielle, from Yorkshire, said: "The communication has been pretty bad with the embassy - people started getting emails for their flights yesterday at 5pm, I wasn't on the manifest [list of passengers] but my partner was.

"I was ringing the embassy until one in the morning, didn't get confirmation until three in the morning and had to be at the airport at six and even then I wasn't on it."

Danielle, who has asthma, said the UK Foreign Office had also not taken into account her own personal circumstances but that she had eventually managed to secure a seat.

Her partner Matthew added that there were "hundreds" of stranded citizens at the airport and that the situation had been "stressful" as they waited for information about their flights.

He said: "There were lots of queues, but it was stressful and the police were tetchy at times but we're home safe and sound now.

"You're sat on the edge of your seat waiting for some news and there was none until the last minute and then there's a scramble to get your bags together and get to the meeting point."

Shona McKenna, 33 and and her friend Stacey Coogan, 30, from Luton, said the "communication wasn't great."

Shona said: "We were put on standby but we didn't get the email until midnight and we had to be at the airport at 7am so a lot of people were asleep and never got it.

"The communication wasn't great, we didn't know when we were going to come home and when the emails came out there wasn't a lot of time.

"The first flight, a lot of people missed it because they didn't get the email in time.

"If you went out to the shop and didn't have WiFi you wouldn't have made the plane. We were lucky we got the standby email."

The pair, from Luton, who had been in South America since January 30, said that contacting the embassy in Peru had been "confusing and stressful".

"We didn't know anything and were just told, 'we're working on it' - that's all," said Ms Coogan.

"It was confusing and a bit stressful, because the first week no one could get hold of the embassy - because they all had to work from home as well - so the first week was a bit of a nightmare.

"We're just glad to be home."

Since the outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, the Foreign Office has helped to bring home almost 1,400 people on specially chartered Government flights from China and Peru and 1,900 people on cruise ships from places including California, Brazil and Japan.

The Foreign Office said it had chartered more flights from Peru, expected to arrive at Gatwick Airport on Tuesday.

In the last week, the Foreign Office has helped more than 4,000 people to get back from Jamaica and more than 8,500 people to get back from Morocco.

Around 5,000 Britons successfully left Bali after the British team in Indonesia worked with their counterparts to unblock a visa permissions issue.

On Monday afternoon, the Government said an announcement on efforts to repatriate Britons stranded abroad by the coronavirus crisis was expected "imminently".