Industry leaders welcomed the transport secretary’s regional travel corridors policy but privately expressed growing anger at the government.
England’s first regional travel corridors policy, announced by Grant Shapps on Monday, came into effect at 4am this morning (Wednesday, September 9).
A senior airline source told Travel Weekly: “It was a negative announcement packaged as positive.”
Shapps told MPs: “We now have the data and capacity to add and remove islands from the quarantine policy.” But the only change was to impose restrictions on travellers returning from the islands of Crete, Mykonos, Santorini, Lesvos, Tinos, Serifos and Zante from 4am on Wednesday.
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The move followed the break-up of a UK-wide quarantine policy after Scotland imposed 14-day self-isolation on returnees from Greece from Thursday of last week and Wales imposed restrictions initially on arrivals from Zante before adding six more Greek islands and mainland Portugal.
The airline source said: “The government’s decision was driven by the need to remove those islands and rushed through because Wales split away.”
At the same time, Shapps stressed those flouting quarantine rules face criminal charges and pledged to raise the penalties, saying: “If you don’t quarantine for 14 days, it’s a criminal offence. Enforcement will be stepped up.”
Asked to consider switching changes to the corridors list from 4am on Saturday to midnight on Sunday, Shapps said: “The medical community says ‘do it immediately, don’t leave any time’.”
An aviation source said: “We are grateful quarantine will be regionalised. We understand the government was looking at the Canaries, the Balearics and the Portuguese islands to see if they could be excluded from quarantine, but there wasn’t time.
“[But] the industry can’t sustain much more of this. The government has not grasped the seriousness of the crisis in the sector. If we’re to benefit from any financial support, it needs to come now.”
The furlough scheme ends in October and the source warned: “Airports have a large proportion of staff on furlough, some up to 60%. Without support, those people won’t have jobs to come back to.”
An industry source said: “The government has looked at island corridors, but it should look further – in line with what it’s doing with local lockdowns. Germany and the Netherlands have fully regional corridor policies. We should move away from quarantine for whole countries.”