China on Friday dispatched three charter planes to Bangkok in Thailand, Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia and Tokyo in Japan and brought home a total of 310 Hubei residents stranded abroad amid the coronavirus outbreak. 

The first two planes operated by XiamenAir departed from Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport at noon. The return flight from Bangkok, carrying 76 passengers landed in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, around 9 p.m. The flight from Kota Kinabalu with 123 passengers arrived around 10:30 p.m.

Each plane is equipped with nine crew members, one doctor and one nurse. After the mission, the two planes will head back to Xiamen in east China's Fujian Province. All the crew members will be put under observation in isolation for 14 days after returning to base.

After organizing those two initial flights, China's aviation authority announced that a third, operated by Spring Airlines, would depart from Shanghai on Friday night for Tokyo. 

The Chinese foreign ministry said earlier on Friday that the government would bring Wuhan residents back from overseas as soon as possible due to the practical difficulties that Chinese tourists, especially those from Wuhan, have been facing abroad. 

Many tourists from Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel virus outbreak, have been prevented from boarding commercial flights at several airports abroad. There have also been cases of flight cancellations or passengers being denied entry, despite the World Health Organization's (WHO) explicit recommendations that travel restrictions should not be implemented in the current situation. 

The WHO has declared a global emergency due to the novel coronavirus. 

Read more: 

WHO says novel coronavirus a global emergency, China responds 

On Tuesday, Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines rerouted an Osaka-Shanghai flight to Wuhan to take 94 stranded passengers from Hubei back home. Other passengers were changed to a different Osaka-Shanghai flight.