Coronavirus Impact on Air Travel

[SWBKCB]

Perhaps aviation should be making a better case as to why it should get preferential treatment compared to other industries?

[ericsson16]

Originally Posted by Pistonprop

This 14 day quarantine is nonsense anyway! With thousands pouring into the UK daily, how to they police it and with what resources?

This is part of the baloney quarantine email I received and for the record I served a 16 day quarantine(two bonus days) for the ginger dictator owing to the garbage weather here in the UK.
"If the National Contact Tracing Centre is unable to contact you via 3 phone calls or an email in order to provide you with public health advice and support during your period of stay in your specified premises, Public Health Scotland is obliged to share your contact details with Police Scotland who will continue with the follow-up process to engage, explain, encourage, and enforce the law, where necessary"
Needless to say I never heard a peep.

[Dannyboy39]

Speculation that Portugal may head back onto the U.K. red list, no doubt because the school holidays have finished and that’s the most important thing...

[racedo]

Got a text from some friends who came back from Croatia today via AMS, they in a different part to area I was in. Easyjet flight into Zadar this morning had 2 pax on it, the outgoing one had circa 60. It was last flight of the season so possibly a reason for it, they flew back to LTN and said flight looked way less than half full from AMS.

[racedo]

Came back yesterday from Croatia and was down south between Split and Dubrovnik on a campsite.

Staff said 60% of holiday makers were German this year which was way higher than normal, most seem to have driven rather than flying by range of cars / RVs etc, Italians normally make up 30% but there were not many of them across the season, Poles / Czechs / Slovaks / Slovenians tended to make up the majority of the rest. Last weekend was great rush back and spoke to one family who had family members drive back earlier with a 28 hr trip back to Bavaria due to Covid / tunnel checks, they left Thursday and has a 12 hr trip. Site manager said normally airport shuttle runs daily but this year rarely as most felt safer driving.

Talked to quite a few Germans and many seems to have diverted from France / Spain this year due to Covid. Course it was a very small sample so who knows.

[LTNman]

So did 7 passengers from 3 different parties catch Covid from the TUI flight or from a Greek Island? Now all the passengers are in quarantine.

Coronavirus: Cases on Tui flight from Zante to Cardiff https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53966897

[inOban]

According to the BBC story a party from Plymouth returned on Monday (airline not specified) and this Cardiff flight on Tuesday, so they must have been infected on Zante. Doesn't say where they were tested, or whether both groups were in same hotel.
I think it's fortunate that the peak season ends this weekend.

[RedDragonFlyer]

Clearly not as the incubation period is, according to the UK gov, up to 14 days.

It's more than possible that some of them might have caught the virus in the UK before they even went to Zante.

Listening to the CMO, it sounds like most/ all of those with the virus are young and he was blaming lack of social distancing whilst on holiday.

[LTNman]

Yes up to 14 days and this flight was last Tuesday. I bet all the passengers were thinking how they had a good holiday and avoided a fresh government country crackdown only to find themselves still having to go into quarantine.

[RedDragonFlyer]

They haven't been contacted yet. PHW has said they will contact all of the passengers tomorrow. Quite how it works when lots of the passengers live in England I don't know.

[inOban]

The incubation period is up to 14 days, but normally around 7 or less.

[ericsson16]

Breaking news everyone,the virus has been in the UK since March and probably before,in fact over 200 countries worldwide have the virus installed in there territory and that's called containment.I've got an idea,why doesn't every country close it's borders,no one in or out,that will stop the spread! and because we in the UK have a jolly good version of the virus we shall all live happily ever after.

[ATNotts]

Originally Posted by LTNman

Yes up to 14 days and this flight was last Tuesday. I bet all the passengers were thinking how they had a good holiday and avoided a fresh government country crackdown only to find themselves still having to go into quarantine.

If the UK had any idea at all it would have decided overnight, as soon as the issue regarding Zante had been identified that every arriving passenger landing on a direct flight from Zante would be met off the plane and have a mandatory test 9no exceptions) before clearing the UKBA, and told to quarantine for 24 hours whilst the test was fast tracked. Those who were positive, symptoms or no symptoms, should have been put into a tight quarantine and monitored - the rest put through 5 days quarantine, then tested again, and released from quarantine if negative.

Doing this would be a useful experiment of a random sample of the population, probably from younger age groups, to establish the extent of infection. If they had been away for 7 or more days then in all likelihood they would have contracted the virus on the island, and for whatever is left of the season that island could have been put on the quarantine list, leaving the rest of Greece open. How hard could it be?

I really don't believe the government has a clue how to work promptly and effectively. The longer this pandemic crisis goes on, the clearer that becomes.

[LTNman]

16 cases now confirmed from that flight. Many people were not wearing masks with even more taking them off when they landed. So much for the claimed filtered air.

Coronavirus: 'Covidiots' criticised on Tui quarantine flight https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53970217

[DaveReidUK]

Which of course does not necessarily mean that the virus was contracted on the flight.

[LTNman]

Would anyone feel safe sitting on an aircraft with 16 existing cases of coronavirus on board? Either cases are rampant on the Island that hasn’t been picked up by the UK government or some passengers have picked up the virus from fellow passengers.

[The96er]

Yes, not everyone is as Coronaphobic as you are. When are the funerals for the 16 tragic victims ?? - oh wait...

[racedo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52589449

Try December. This is a traceable one which means likely was here early last year as well, just not in the quantity that made it notifiable.

[ATNotts]

Originally Posted by The96er

Yes, not everyone is as Coronaphobic as you are. When are the funerals for the 16 tragic victims ?? - oh wait...

I'm not sure whether comment is stupid, or just plain arrogant.

It's not the 16 people that have tested positive, it's the people who over the subsequent 5 days who they have associated with, possibly infected, and could possibly inadvertently put into hospital, or worse potentially in their boxes, and 6 feet under. Are they happy to "kill their granny"?

The passenger who was interviewed said that others weren't wearing masks, were wearing them around their chins and roaming around the cabin of the aircraft. Frankly, if that is a reflection on how TUI are carrying out their duty of care, not just to the passengers but to their employees one wonders whether they should be allowed to continue to operate. Sadly, I imagine that other airlines are taking a similarly lax attitude towards passengers who won't comply with what are very simple, straightforward regulations. The CAA perhaps needs to read the riot act to TUI in particular, and make all carriers aware that the rules aren't optional.

All that said, it's a little strange that the passenger who was on the BBC news today apparently hadn't raised concerns at the time, and took until a week after the event to speak up. I can only say that if I was on the aircraft I'd have pressed the call button and asked the crew to sort the "covidiots" out at the time, and the captain should probably have made it clear to all passengers that he would divert and have the offenders unceremoniously kicked off the flight.

I am by no means covid-phobic, but if people have decided to travel on public transport of any sort then it is their responsibility to comply with the rules of that means of transport, and the carrier's responsibility to ensure compliance by those who try to disregard the rules.

[racedo]

Originally Posted by ATNotts

I really don't believe the government has a clue how to work promptly and effectively. The longer this pandemic crisis goes on, the clearer that becomes.

This was obvious last February.

The pronouncements that wearing mask were of no benefit until someone decided they were.