A pilot has not been able to fly home for nearly a year to grieve with his family after losing his teenage son to cancer due to the Covid travel rules.
Alistair Caton, 52, is based in red-listed Qatar and faces the threat of redundancy if he was to return home to Cheltenham due to quarantine rules.
He lost his son Angus, aged 14, in June last year but he has not been able to return since August to comfort his wife Adele and his other two kids.
As a pilot he is exempt from quarantine rules but as a passenger, from a red-listed country, to see his family he would need to self-isolate for 10 days in a hotel.
The restrictions and the fact his employer will only allow up to 10 days leave at a time means it is impossible to visit.
The family are unhappy as Alistair has been double vaccinated and they would at least like him to be able to self-isolate at home rather than in a hotel.
It is a similar for many expats around the world who are unable to return to see family.
Speaking about her husband's absence Adele reportedly said: "It is ridiculous. He is double-jabbed with Pfizer and gets PCR tests all the time.
"If they just want him to stay at home that's fine. But it is crazy that as a British citizen with the level of protection he has, he can not get back into his own country.
"We have not been able to process any of our grief. We had a small funeral for 20 people at the beginning of July, but have wanted to have a celebration of his life that we have had to cancel twice.
"Until we get him home we can not start any of the things that involve getting through our grief, like distributing the ashes and supporting each other as a family."
Normally Alistair would travel home twice a month for three or four days depending on his flight schedule, which the family had to accept due to how difficult it is to have a job in the aviation industry.
The family are now lobbying the government alongside their local MP to review the Covid traffic light travel system.
Alistair was back for three months with his son Angus dying on June 28 aged 14 and having first battled cancer when he was six.
A pupil at Dean Close School in Cheltenham, Angus's family said that he "fought the cancer with all he had" and "never once complained".
