Aviation sector slams ‘devastating’ 14-day quarantine plans
The leaders of the UK’s biggest airlines and airports have written to the government criticising its newly-announced 14-day quarantine period for incoming visitors to the UK.
In the letter, which is signed by 27 senior industry figures including the chief executives of Ryanair, Easyjet, Heathrow, Gatwick, and Tui, the sector warned:
“An open-ended quarantine, with no set end date, will make an already critical situation for UK aviation, and all the businesses we support, even worse.
“People will simply choose not to travel to and from the UK, at the same time as economies in Europe and around the world begin opening up their borders and removing their own quarantines – making the UK aviation sector unable to compete”.
“Grounding airlines indefinitely will further exacerbate an already devastating economic impact on UK aviation”, it added.
After Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the quarantine measures last night, the government confirmed them in this afternoon’s coronavirus recovery strategy.
The measures will not be implemented as soon as practicable, the government said.
The letter added that the industry had “had no clarity on key details of the proposal” and demanded a meeting with Johnson to discuss the measures.
It said that instead of implementing the quarantine, the government should instead develop health measures as a priority:
“We believe this is the right approach, permitting a cautious, controlled restart to passenger air travel, unlike a quarantine which takes no account of the status of the outbreak at the point of departure to the UK”.
If not, it warned, the UK’s airlines risked being unable to compete with other countries as the began to open their borders and begin flying again.
Global sector body IATA said the measures signalled to other countries that the UK was “moving in the opposite direction” to other countries:
“The UK is the world’s third-largest air passenger market. Some 120m passengers flew to the UK in 2019, supporting more than 1.5m jobs and generating around £100bn. Compulsory quarantine will discourage a great many of those travelers”.
Speaking to the Transport Select Committee this morning, IAG chief executive Willie Walsh said that the measures would definitely make things “worse” for the sector.
“It’s definitely going to make it worse,” he said. “There’s nothing positive in anything I heard the Prime Minister say yesterday.”
Walsh said that the airline would have to reassess its plans to ramp up to 50 per cent service in July as a result of the quarantine plan.
The government said that further details, and guidance, will be set out shortly, and the measures and list of exemptions will be kept under regular review.