The Covid restrictions are not helping in anyway when it comes to the travel sector and most people are just trying to keep up. What may look like companies are doing to make massive amount of money could just be companies trying just about anything to keep their heads above water.
According to the all-parliamentary group on the future aviation, airline passenger numbers in the UK are down 89 per cent compared to 2019 levels, behind the continental average of 78 per cent. In the last month, there have been just 3,424,407 passengers from the UK, just a tenth of the 32.5m passengers who flew in the same period in 2019.
These figures, which were provided by Airports Council International Europe, show that Britain lags both major rivals such as Germany and France, as well as southern European nations like Italy and Spain. This also has to do with the fact that Britain was at one point a red list country and had its own strain of the virus. They come amid continuing outcry from the sector over the government’s current restrictions, which have restricted free travel to all but a small handful of nations.
A few more countries, including holiday hotspots the Balearic Islands, will join the travel “green list” tomorrow, but travelers also risk being thwarted by an Angela Merkel-inspired push to ban all unvaccinated Brits from the EU. Thus far, a number of nations, including Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Malta have imposed mandatory quarantine on Brits who have not been fully vaccinated.
Commenting Henry Smith MP, chair of the APPG for the future of aviation “It defies belief that we continue to hold back our aviation, travel and tourism industries from a safe and proper restart as we are seeing throughout Europe. These figures highlight that the promised restart for international travel is nothing more than another false dawn for an industry close to breaking point. Far from benefiting from our world class vaccination programme, UK aviation continues to be held back by an overly cautious approach that not only squanders our vaccine dividend but puts UK plc at a significant competitive disadvantage to our European neighbour’s.”
