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BRITISH airlines and tourism companies are planning a ‘day of action’ for next Wednesday (6/23) to put pressure on the government to ease travel restrictions before the start of the peak summer holiday.
Tourism companies are at their lowest during the pandemic, and look set to miss out on summer vacation despite the UK’s strict quarantine requirements still in place. As of July, Europe’s biggest carrier Ryanair and Manchester Airports Group on Thursday launched legal action. This is done to try to get the government to relax the rules.
Quoted from Reuters, on Wednesday (6/23) a number of pilots, cabin crew and travel agents will gather in Westminster, central London and at airports across the UK to try to garner support. The UK aviation industry is feeling the impact of the pandemic more than any other airline in Europe, according to data published by the pilot’s union BALPA on Sunday (20/6) from Reuters.
The number of daily arrivals and departures to the UK fell 73% on an average day earlier this month compared to before the pandemic, the biggest decline in Europe. Spain, Greece and France fell less than 60%. UK airports were also badly hit, with traffic in and out of London’s second-busiest airport, Gatwick, down 92%, according to data.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said the government had to balance the risk of foreign tourist holidays bringing a new variant of the virus to Britain. Public Health England official Susan Hopkins said people should stay home this summer while the population was vaccinated.
BALPA demands that the British Government act together, and open up US routes to European holiday destinations, which have been blocked without any published evidence. More than 45,000 jobs have been lost on UK aviation, with estimates showing that 860,000 aviation, travel and tourism jobs are supported only by the government’s furlough scheme. [antaranews/photo special]
