London — With all British schools now closed for the summer, airports and airlines were looking a tad more normal on Saturday, though the number of families heading off for warmer climes remains way down from before the coronavirus pandemic.
This weekend traditionally marks the great summer getaway from Britain, with airports jam-packed with excitable children and their anxious parents heading off mostly to the popular beach resorts of southern Europe, from Portugal’s Algarve coast within the west to the sun-soaked island nation of Cyprus to the east.
However, with travel to and from many popular destinations going through various and often confusing quarantine and testing necessities, it’s clear that many British families think it’s all too much hassle and has opted again to vacation within the U.K.
For the second yr running, it’s all about the “staycation.”
Still, the numbers venturing abroad are certainly on the rise, partly as a result of the U.K.’s rapid rollout of coronavirus vaccines that has seen almost 70% of the adult population receive the requisite two doses and over 87% get at least one dose.
The British government, which has been operating a traffic-light system for abroad travel, recently tweaked its guidelines to make it simpler for fully vaccinated individuals and their families to travel. Now, anybody arriving back in England from “amber” list destinations — together with Greece, Spain and the USA — are exempt from the government’s 10-day quarantine requirement subject to testing requirements.
Though France is on the “amber” list, anybody coming back from there to England still has to quarantine for 10 days amid concerns over the beta variant first identified in South Africa.
Industry leaders mentioned the changes have helped buoy up the travel sector, one of the worst affected during the pandemic, as well as many destinations in Europe that rely heavily on British tourists.
Airports and airlines across the U.K. are enjoying their busiest weekend of the yr so far. London’s Heathrow Airport mentioned it was expecting about 129,000 passengers on Saturday and Sunday. Although welcome, that’s about half the number it noticed two years ago.
Gatwick, Britain’s No. 2 airports, was expecting between 25,000 to 27,000 passengers a day over the weekend. Again that’s far lower than the equivalent weekend in pre-COVID times when it may see around 100,000 travellers a day.
Holiday company Tui mentioned it has almost double the number of passengers travelling from Friday to Sunday compared with last weekend. It will be resuming flights to a series of destinations including the Greek islands of Kefalonia and Skiathos, and Marrakech in Morocco.
Courtesy: Associated Press
