The boss of the UK’s second biggest tour operator says the decision to keep Turkey on the red list at the latest review was “a big disappointment”.
Jet2holidays chief executive Steve Heapy cautiously welcomed last week’s green list additions but said the data showed Turkey should have moved to amber.
“If you look at the data, it’s improving, the infection rates are coming down, the vaccination rates are going up,” he told a Travel Weekly webcast. “It warrants being on the amber list.”
Jet2 aims to restart flights to Turkey on July 22 and is talking to the Turkish government about its plans.
“Starting an airline operation is not like getting in your car and turning the key again; it takes a lot of planning and organisation,” he said.
“If we could understand the criteria that the [UK] government use and the parameters they look at, we’d all be a lot happier.”
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Heapy also slated the government’s decision to allow officials and VIP fans to visit England for the final matches of Euro 2020 without having to quarantine.
The decision was taken last week to ensure the games will be played at Wembley in London, instead of Hungary, which has fewer restrictions on arrivals.
Echoing the concerns that many travel trade professionals made during last week’s Travel Day of Action, he said: “I’m a huge football fan. I’d love to see football in the UK. But I’m quite happy to sacrifice that at the moment.”
“The first thing is: it’s insane. And the second thing is, it is utterly wrong and disrespectful to the tens of thousands of people that have made huge sacrifices.
“You’re a sole trader travel agent that’s on the edge. You’ve had virtually no income, the income you are getting now you can’t actually use till the customer travels – so you are still in this state of limbo, and yet these people can just come into the country, watch football, have their prawn sandwiches and champagne and then bugger off back to where they came from.”
He said the move was “so disappointing”, especially as he has “several thousand colleagues that have been sat home for months, waiting very patiently on furlough [and] the whole company has been on a pay cut for over a year”.
Speaking after transport secretary Grant Shapps’ confirmation that fully-vaccinated travellers arriving from amber list countries will not have to quarantine from ‘later in the summer’, Heapy said: “There’s no reason why this [policy] shouldn’t be put in place pretty soon.
“This government is letting several thousand Uefa officials into the country without any form of quarantine. We don’t know where they’ve been. And we’re still under these massive restrictions.
“Travel isn’t a second-class industry. If that vaccine works and 62% of the population have had both vaccines, then put it in place – be bold.”