Relieved Britons have returned to the UK from the "terrifying" Middle East on taxpayer-funded evacuation flights.
The evacuees were flown back from the UAE on Etihad Airways EY067, one of just 15 Etihad flights to leave Abu Dhabi on Monday and the only flight to arrive in England since war in Iran broke out.
Isabel Robertson, 29, from Windsor, was greeted by her mother Alba after her flight from Dubai had been cancelled.
Ms Robertson said she was "so lucky" to be on the first - and so far only - flight to leave the region.
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She told the Mail: "I went to see my friends. I had such a great week. I had meant to have been leaving on Saturday. My friend was going to drive me to the airport.
"I was like: 'Why has my flight been cancelled?' 10 minutes later, I could hear an explosion."
She added: "There were explosions this morning. It has been terrifying, like honestly, terrifying.
"The noises, it was terrifying, the explosions. I used to live there and it was my first time back in three years."
Isabel Robertson (right) was embraced by her mother Alba after returning to London
|PA
Fay McCaul, 41, was originally due to leave the UAE on Saturday with her young son, but her flight was cancelled after "sirens started going off" and people were warned of potential military strikes.
She said: "It was just taking ages to board, with no announcements, so we didn’t know what was going on.
"And then after the boarding time, sirens started going off in the airport and everyone started receiving texts on their phones with alarm signals to stay away from windows because of potential missile strikes.
"So then it was pretty chaotic, and the airline obviously didn’t know what was going on either."
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Jeff and Rebecca Moses, from Manchester, were staying at Fairmont Bab Al Bahr hotel in Abu Dhabi before their return to England
|PA
Ms McCaul said her family was then "grounded basically in the airport with no information for hours".
The stranded passengers were eventually sent to hotels until flights could resume, with Ms McCaul "really lucky" to be allocated a space on the earliest flight out of Abu Dhabi.
She added that some passengers had been sent to Dubai, some two hours away.
Lindsay Elvidge and her husband Ric, both 60, were coming back from a three-week holiday in Perth, Australia, when the second leg of their journey from Doha to London was cancelled.
A woman is embraced by her fiancee after returning on a flight from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates | PAMr Elvidge said his experience within Abu Dhabi airport could have been worse.
He said: "It wasn’t awful. It could have been a hell (of a) lot worse.
"We were very lucky to get out so quickly, to be fair, it could have been a hell (of a) lot worse."
Over 100,000 Britons in the Middle East have so far registered their locations with the Foreign Office, the vast majority of whom are in the UAE and are holidaymakers.
Sir Keir Starmer has said the Government is currently "exploring all options for helping our citizens return home".
But the Foreign Office is currently making contingency plans if the airspace continues to be shut down, with options including transporting British nationals by bus to safe countries before sending them home from there.
Plans are also being formulated to evacuate British nationals from Israel, Palestine and Lebanon if the crisis continues.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that 102,000 British nationals had now registered their presence in the region and said there were about 300,000 Britons in Middle Eastern countries targeted by Iran.
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