The police are meant to enforce the rules. They can be seen everyday strutting around in pairs carrying big guns and doing very little apart from chatting about what they did the night before. Money for nothing as every hour they have a change of shift for a well earned tea break. When the terminal was closed and even when there was only 3 flights a day LLAOL could not get the police to reduce their airport presence as the airport was picking up the wage bill.

Meanwhile LTNman gets accosted frequently by illegal taxi touts with not a copper in sight as the walk from the cosy terminal to the drop off area is just too far for the long arm of the law.

This is not wrong at all. It is one of my pet hates about travelling through LTN and there needs to be a clampdown. Tourists are being heavily ripped off, but Addison Lee are not helping the situation either.

I was maybe being a little unkind to the Old Bill, as they have taken action on occasions but they could do far more.

https://www.bedfordshire.police.uk/n...g-ban#b20a7484

Another case

https://www.phtm.co.uk/news/2618/pht...-taxi-business

I think they follow cars out of the barrier to avoid the £1 a minute parking charge for long stayers.

Luton recorded 297,000 pax in October -82%

The expectation for November is a drop of 95%.

I think November will be a w/o at all UK airports.

There are still holiday flights from Luton for those that want a holiday. I think the police should be a little bit more proactive at Luton and should be asking a few questions why people are travelling.

Not sure there are many passengers to ask judging by these images: https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2020...an-80-per-cent

The guy in the video is from LLAOL who are the airport operator. He has an accent, as he is Spanish, as is the largest LLAOL shareholder Aena who runs the show. Aena are the worlds largest airport operator so maybe he should be asking the Spanish government for financial help seeing it was the Spanish government that privatised the company a few years ago.

Also it hasn't stopped LLAOL spending money on planning applications and consultations with reports for airport expansion so they are not as hard up as they make out. Clearly it is a tragedy for those low paid workers who have been laid off or sacked but I have little sympathy with Aena.

As for the other 49% shareholder, they are subject to a takeover bid so clearly there is plenty of money there as well.

RYR operating flights to Tenerife & Malta, probably thinking cheaper to run the flights rather than refund?
Why do you think Police should be involved, next it will be roadblocks on M5 questioning why people go to Cornwall? Should be questioning more what it happening in Luton town itself!

The move by Blue Air to LHR seems to be part of a wider change of focus. They're moving their Paris flights from Beauvais to CDG, according to routes online.

The current ban of leaving the country for leisure is draconian, and more reminiscent of East Germany than the United Kingdom. By all means put strict, and monitored conditions on those who return, but leaving the UK the onus should be upon the destination country to decide how to handle potential infections from abroad.

Pretty nonsense stuff really...

Not condoning travel ex UK in a National Health Emergency at all but what would happen to the many passengers who may well be denied entry into the destination country then under those proposals?

The onus is on the UK & populous to handle it`s own Lockdown Emergency within its own borders & not to export it & for everyone to act responsibly surely.

So you are quite happy for leisure returnees then to be liabilities of the UK taxpayer & drain too very limited resources to monitor them after irresponsible travel.

Did you ever travel to East Germany?

The police are meant to be enforcing Covid regulations. The airport has its own dedicated police team who just work at the airport even when there were no passengers. With very few passengers travelling it would not take much of an effort to ask passengers why they are travelling and would give them something to do.

As for roadblocks, the police set them up on Sunday mornings on the Airport approach road to do car insurance and car tax checks as well as other checks on the drivers. Is that justified or part of a police state?

To answer your last point first; yes, in 1989.

Did I suggest that the UK taxpayer paid for the quarantine? No. That should be the responsibility of the traveller.

Then perhaps you should be aware of course that using rhetoric comparing the UK with East Germany in denying travel for jollies over a limited period to aid attempts to quell a virus which is perceived to be out of control is plain daft quite honestly.

Back to the assumption again that flights to sun destinations only carry holidaymakers! I'm sure there will be some rule breakers but like I said not many. There were a grand total of 75 passengers between both the Tenerife and Malta departures today - and only 500 passengers across all flights.

I just can't buy the argument that it is cheaper to operate a flight than pay for refunds, but happy to be corrected if anyone produce the evidence/figures to support this opinion.

Also to a point raised earlier about the impact on low paid workers, it should be pointed out that there are also plenty of well paid back office staff, including company directors, managers, pilots, engineers, marketing, finance, operations, project managers, analysts, fire fighters etc etc that have also been furloughed, taken a pay cut or been made redundant from almost every company based at the airport.

You can argue the rights or wrongs of the airport's priorities but ultimately any money saved by not running their consultation is frankly a drop in the ocean and would not make any material difference to the balance sheet.

If enough seats are sold and no one turns up then the flight is still profitable. The airlines then make even more money out of a passenger that fails to turn up, as they keep the airport passenger and handling charges and the government passenger tax that was part of the ticket price.

It's getting really quiet now. Yesterday saw no EZY, and just half a dozen each Wizz and Ryanair flights.

Saw this article and remembered this thread. Article is behind paywall, but gist is that the law has been poorly drafted and therefore in the view of a top barrister is total nonsense and unenforceable and any prosecutions wouldn't succeed. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/c...-human-rights/