Hello, it's Wednesday the 22nd of September and thanks for joining me, Simon Calder, for the latest on travel and destinations from the Green List and the travel desk of the Independent.

Today, the Red List has reduced, but the Foreign Office still warns against travel to Egypt and some other countries.

British Airways passengers are stranded in Tashkent, I'll explain what we know about that,

and the Wizard of Oz, what's that got to do with travel to France?

Of course, this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email, and you are very

welcome to sign up at independent.co.uk forward slash

newsletters. The red list which the government uses to protect the UK against people who have come in

from places with high infection rates or where there is a fear of

variance of concern has just shrunk from 52 countries to 54. We have seen Pakistan, Bangladesh,

Sri Lanka, Egypt, Oman, Kenya, the Maldives and Turkey all come off the hotel quarantine list, which is tremendous news except that Egypt and Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are also on the Foreign Office no-go list.

This is effectively the travel advice from the Foreign Office which says we advise against all non-essential travel to a country because of the high levels of COVID-19.

So, according to the Foreign Office, there's high levels of coronavirus.

According to the Department for Transport, that no longer presents a threat.

Make of that what you can.

The effect is that if you are travelling to those countries, particularly Egypt, very popular

winter sun destination, then your standard travel insurance policy will not be valid and crucially

package holiday companies will not be operating, which explains why Tuey and Jet 2 haven't yet

come out to offer some options for

this coming winter. I'm sure they would love to do that. British Airways Flight 260 from

Islamabad to London Heathrow was due to be one of the earliest arrivals after Pakistan came off the

red list. So therefore you can be pretty confident there are a lot of passengers on board.

Including according to reports, an 83-year-old woman who very sadly fell ill on board the flight. The captain

...