Travel: Air bridges shelved
The Daily Telegraph reports that holidaymakers are to be cleared for take-off to 75 countries.
Individual air bridges will be effectively abandoned by the Government, as it emerged that as many as 75 countries will be on the first quarantine exemption list for British holidaymakers. The list, to be published today, will lift the Foreign Office ban on non-essential travel to nearly all EU destinations, the British territories including Bermuda and Gibraltar, and Turkey, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. All 75 have been judged sufficiently low risk destinations for holidaymakers based on the prevalence of Covid-19, that their infection rate is in decline and that their data on the state of the disease can be trusted.
(image above - Sky News)
It means that from Monday travellers to the 75 countries will no longer have to quarantine for 14 days on their return to the UK although some like Australia and New Zealand are expected to retain border controls and quarantine for as long as the rest of 2020. Greece, which is expected to be a 'green' rated low-risk country under the Government's traffic light system, has suspended flights from the UK until July 15 due to the UK’s higher Coronavirus rate. The USA, Russia and Brazil will be among countries on the 'red' list where the ban on non-essential travel will continue. Sweden, which tops the table in the EU with a rate of 60 cases of Coronavirus per 100,000 of the population, is expected to be classed as 'red' while Portugal with a rate of 20 per 100,000 is also thought to be at risk of being excluded after an outbreak in and around Lisbon.
Airport terminals are likely to be less busy than previously for some time still to come.
(Heathrow Airport Ltd)
The move will be welcomed by the travel and aviation industry and holidaymakers but was seen on Wednesday night as tacit acceptance that bilateral 'air bridges' or travel corridors, were unworkable. Paul Charles, a spokesman for the Quash Quarantine campaign group of 500 travel and hospitality businesses, said: “We have said all along that air bridges were unsustainable in Europe because you can’t restrict people travelling in the EU or Schengen.
“It’s sensible and logical and I wish we could have had it earlier. It begs the question as to why have we gone round in circles.”
The announcement was expected mid-week but is thought to have been delayed due to objections to air bridges by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, and the growing size of the list. Ms Sturgeon, who this week reserved the right to quarantine English visitors, said on Wednesday that if she chose not to allow air bridges then "I will set out why that is the case and the practical problems, challenges and implications that flow from that and how we will try to deal with them.”
The UK’s rate of 8.5 per 100,000 places it ninth behind Luxembourg, Serbia, Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic and Croatia, according to a Daily Telegraph analysis of official Coronavirus data. Sources however, confirmed Croatia, a popular tourist destination for Britons, would be on the list of 75 as would Turkey, which has a higher rate of 9.7. Countries with lower rates than the UK include France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Iceland, Poland, Malta, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Slovenia, Slovakia and Germany, all of which it is expected will be on the list. However, Ireland, which is expected to publish its 'green' list of countries from which visitors will be exempt from quarantining on arrival from July 9, has already indicated Britons could be forced to self-isolate for 14 days due to the UK’s higher rate. Finland is also expected to require a country to have a rate of under eight per 100,000 before it allows in its tourists from July 13, which would appear to exclude the UK.
Whatever the scale of demand, face masks are becoming mandatory on all airlines.
(Air Canada)
Whilst Grant Shapps has for weeks pushed within Cabinet for a series of air bridge deals, senior officials in the Foreign Office were from mid-June already casting doubt on the plausibility of the plan. A senior Government source told The Telegraph that creating a specific list of countries exempt from quarantine posed a diplomatic nightmare and could be open to legal challenge.
They suggested that to avoid such a fall-out, officials were instead pushing for a more informal system which would merely see the FCO's travel advice section amended to include a list of high-risk countries where Britons should refrain from travelling to.
Henry Smith, chair of the cross party Future of Aviation group, said: “This has been done in a very piecemeal way and with a degree of uncertainty. I still think the introduction of quarantine was not the right decision but we are where we are.
“We need to get a set of criteria and subsequent list of countries published. Every day of uncertainty translates into more jobs lost.”
KJM Today Opinion
Leaving aside the question as to whether or not Scotland's First Minister and her colleagues have the power to put visitors from England into quarantine (how would this be enforced? There is no border between Scotland and England, no immigration and no customs check posts and Scotland is part of the United Kingdom), the real question over travel is how many people will actually do so.
Yes, there will be a surge in travel demand of some description in the immediate term. But given the panic and hysteria worldwide over Covid-19 and Coronaviruses generally - along with the consistent misuse of the terms and misinterpretation of what a Coronavirus actually is from everybody - how big will that surge be and for how long? Within the UK there has already been cases of people from Leicester being told their already-booked holidays are cancelled and it must be considered likely that overall, the demand for travel outside the UK will not be so great that airlines can swing back into action and restore their business quickly. And we have also consistently said that there will be second waves of Covid-19.
London to Dublin is Aer Lingus's busiest route
(Kevan James)
This of course is also affected by the countries to which travel is possible - will all of these 75 countries accept British visitors? Despite being part of the Common Travel Area, Ireland (as The Telegraph suggests) has indicated it may quarantine arrivals from the UK because of the recorded rate of infections. Yet London to Dublin and back is - or was - the busiest route for Irish carrier Aer Lingus. And travel to and from the USA, also highly profitable for the airline, is still on the no-fly list.
As to the comment by Paul Charles, "that air bridges were unsustainable in Europe because you can’t restrict people travelling in the EU or Schengen", perhaps he and Quash Quarantine need reminding that the UK is no longer a member of the EU and neither is it, not has it ever been, a signatory to the Schengen Agreement.
KJM Today has maintained that the worldwide lockdowns were an overreaction and especially so in the United Kingdom. With further job losses announced this week, there will be more to come. The economic damage around the globe has been and will continue to be incalculable. That infection and death rates from Covid-19 have been fiddled in an upwards direction (deliberately or otherwise) is not, in our view, in doubt. Given that Covid-19 is a Coronavirus, like others, including the common cold, and no lockdowns have been imposed for any other pandemic of any of them, at any time ever, perhaps the restrictions still in place by other countries may be termed something of a payback for inaccurate reporting - at all levels - of a health situation.
Aviation Books from KJM Today
Coming Soon:
'So You Want To Start An Airline' by Andy Martin
All the questions and answers about how airlines work
Available now from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
