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“I’ve decided to send a charter flight to Cairo tomorrow (Wednesday) to allow those who wish to leave to do so. I will send further flights if we see a need to do so,” Hague told parliament.

The plane is due to leave Cairo to return to Britain on Thursday.
The Foreign Office said that flights on the service would cost 300 pounds (349 euros, $477) each.

Hague later said that while there was a sufficient number of commercial flights between Egypt and Britain, he wanted to give the estimated 2,000 British nationals in Cairo every opportunity to leave if they wished.

“I’m sending an additional flight to be sure that people who do want to leave are able to do so, I think it’s just safe and sensible to do so and not leave things to chance,” he told the BBC.

“There have been enough commercial flights, so far people have been getting through the airport, sometimes after a delay of a day and a night, but they have been able to get out.”

Hague denied that the decision to send the plane reflected any advance knowledge on the part of British authorities about an impending deterioration of the situation in Egypt.

“It’s just a precautionary measure,” he added.

The minister said, however, that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement of a cabinet reshuffle on Monday was not enough to address the demands of the protesters, who turned out in their hundreds of thousands on Tuesday. The United States, China, India, Japan, Canada, Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia and a host of other countries around the world have also laid on flights to evacuate their citizens from Egypt – AFP