Jet2holidays customers asked the operator to add Cyprus back into its holiday programme for this summer, despite the requirement to have a negative Covid-19 test result in order to gain entry to the island.
Chief executive Steve Heapy had previously said it did not feel “reasonable” to ask British travellers to pay an extra 90 Euros each for the Covid-19 test as it could add almost 400 Euros onto the cost of a holiday for a family of four.
But the operator announced on August 10 that flights and holidays to Cyprus would resume on August 17.
It has put 40,000 seats back on sale to Larnaca starting on August 17 from eight UK airports – Birmingham, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford, Stansted, Manchester and Newcastle.
The company also resumes flights and holidays to Paphos the following day with 45,000 seats for the remainder of the summer from Birmingham, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford, Stansted, Manchester and Newcastle.
Heapy told Travel Weekly: “Customers were contacting us saying they didn’t think it was right that we were cancelling their holidays. They were telling us they still wanted to go and will get the test and are very happy to do so, so we put Cyprus back on basically down to customer demand.”
Tui has yet to restart its operations to Cyprus.
A statement on its website says: “You can go on holiday to Cyprus with Tui from August.
“Because the local authorities in Cyprus have introduced testing requirements for arriving passengers, we have cancelled all Cyprus holidays due to depart on or before 22 August 2020. We’re continuing to keep a close eye on government guidelines and expect to be able to start flying to Cyprus again soon.”
