UK airlines lagging behind European rivals as travel restrictions continue
The UK’s airlines have been the slowest in Europe to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, new figures released tonight show, as travel restrictions continue to hammer the sector.
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.
The 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.
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 travellers 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 said that the restrictions risked wasting the benefits of the UK’s “world-class” vaccination programme.
“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 neighbours.
He said that from 19 July all those who had been double vaccinated should no longer be subject to quarantine requirements when returning from “amber list” countries.