Regardless of this, Package Holidays are integral to the survival of Jet2. I feel they waited a bit long here to react, TUI canceled theirs immediately.
This does not bode well for the Holiday Charter Industry at all, people will start to look at Staycations, they will not want to travel if there is a risk their holiday could be canceled at the last minute. Jet2 could well find the future tough, I imagine this could see the end of the 757's, the 733's and the A320, it may well be time to cut your cloth accordingly. Which of course means more of our colleagues being made redundant, this is not good news at all for any of us.

No, not sufficient reading at all. Your first post (only your 2nd ever on Pprune) said Jet 2 "......seem to be the only airline reducing their head count", which is patently untrue. Ryanair are continual talking of base closures, which will be delivered with redundancies. You then offer a flimsy comment in order to remove EasyJet from your argument, and then adopt the same casual approach to discounting all other airlines. If TUI genuinely believe that short haul traffic will be back to pre-Covid levels by next summer then that is a huge gamble IMHO, as events over this weekend have shown. And a large part of TUI operations is long-haul. Even if short haul markets recover, there will be a huge drain to cover the losses in the long haul sector.

Which leaves your original post as "Jet2 are the only airline in the UK called Jet2 who are reducing headcount." It would seem your main point is to somehow paint TUI in a positive light for whole scale salary reductions and to cast aspersions on Jet2. :hmm:

15-20 years ago BMI Baby operated frequent full 737 flights to Newquay from the north. Is there not a market to re-introduce seasonal flights to places like Newquay / Southend / Exeter for people from Manchester / Leeds/ and all points north? Equally there may be people in the south who would like to retreat to picturesque spots in Scotland- without the long drive.
Whilst maybe not a goldmine- maybe it would at least keep aircraft & crew ticking over? The Covid crisis is not going to be over anytime soon, until they get a system like airport routine testing & proper track and trace, alternative markets might help survivability ?

And what do they need when they've got to Newquay or Scotland? A car. And hiring one isn't cheap.

I think the planners are doing an amazing job but the costs of flying the next 4 weeks with empty sectors is alarming

Some flying been upgraded to 757’s from MAN from this Saturday. As expected it will be Greek and Turkish destinations that the aircraft operate to. So far a few additional flights have also been added to the schedule to Turkey to accommodate the Spanish rebooking.

Eastern Airways operate to Newquay from the north of England. What do people do when they do there, I think it's called surfing!

It would be interesting loading surfboards onto the Eastern 🤔😀

Jet2 tells holidaymakers in Spain to come home early
 

If true, this is quite surprising. Unlike the usual Jet2 customer service but the costs will, of course, be hitting hard.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53595962

Are the media confusing Jet2 Holidays package passengers with those that are flying under a conventional Jet.com ticket? Obviously if the latter choose not to come home, and Jet2.com cancels their flights, then they have to find another way back, perhaps with another scheduled carrier, or if they're second home owners, ride it out, but for independent travellers I doubt that's beyond the wit of most of them.

Since Ryanair and/or EZY are continuing to fly to these destinations, why don't they arrange to transfer the return flight to either of them?

Well its the top story on the BBC Six O'Clock news, interviewing package holiday customers who cannot contact their rep.
I feel for Jet2, but all that hard won customer goodwill is fast evaporating.

If I were Jet2, I'd have told them all to stay till the last date passengers were due come home earlier to stay there for another week- expenses covered - and fly bigger groups home maybe one or twice per week. Far more goodwill in giving them longer away than shortening.

Not so much when a 2-week quarantine will still be required upon entering the UK though.

I did always feel their restart was rather rapid and sudden in reaching (according to their CEO) near-normal levels of service, compared to TUI’s more cautious approach. Perhaps this is the price they will now pay for that.

Thing is, for those 10/11/14 night stays it's not worth it for the company to fly out to PMI etc to pick up 10 pax on one flight, 12 on another, 5 on the other. Yes you could condense them but you've then got the issue with the distancing on coaches back to their individual airports. So up to this weekend your fine as full loads on return, but form next week you've got light loads as no one has flown out this week, and you've only got the +8 night stays.

The question really has to be - why go on holiday in the first place. I mean, it will hardly be enjoyable will it.

I suppose it depends what you want from a holiday, and if it's bars, nightclubs, soaking up sun on the beach and that, then no I really don't think I'd bother, especially given that I'd also have to wear a mask for probably 6 hours at a stretch flying to and from.

However it the outdoors is what you're after (walking, eating in restaurants, relaxation and just chilling) then a trip may be quite enjoyable. I've recently returned from The Netherlands and Germany doing just that, and frankly the restrictions, though mandatory and far more firmly policed than in UK, were no hassle at all.

It's horses for courses.

Exactly this. I'm in Italy (in an area with low Covid rates) with the family and having a lovely time. We came by train. We're adhering to all social distancing and mask wearing as we would do in the UK.

I arrived on my Jet2 holiday in Croatia yesterday and we are having a great time so far. Yes, we had to wear our masks in the airport, on the aeroplane and on the transfer to resort, but that was absolutely no problem at all. Here in resort everything is open, bars, restaurants, water activities etc, and the only time masks are required are if you go inside shops/supermarkets.

My question is why wouldn’t you, just pick where you go and don’t be overly upset if things change. Embrace the new normal.

If you booked the holiday 12 months ago, you dont really have a choice, unless you are prepared to lose the entire cost of the holiday.

Exactly, there’s been an awful lot of blame placed on customers for “booking during a global pandemic” when many have not done this. To then be told by your airline/holiday company that you are to travel on holiday, only to receive a text/email whilst away informing you that you may or may not have to come home early at short notice is not exactly a particularly good experience. Obviously the airlines are not responsible for the sudden reintroduction of quarantine but they do have a duty of care to their customers, or at least they ought to have if they wish to retain a good reputation. Government advice is not currently to end holidays prematurely, this is very much a commercial decision.

Government advice is currently "From 27 July, the FCO advise against all non-essential travel to Spain, including the Balearic and Canary Islands, based on the current assessment of COVID-19 risks in the country." Quite how you determine this does not apply to those already in country on vacation I am not sure?

It's a fine distinction. If "the FCO advise against all non-essential travel to Spain" obviously those already in the country are not going to travel there because they are already there!!

Because it says so two paras down?

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/spain

The UK Govt appears to have decided that it doesn't want any more Brits to go on holiday to Spain. Boris / Rishi have seen how much bringing Thomas Cook's customers home cost in Sept 2019. Boris also knows how much hassle was involved bringing everyone home in March 2020 at the start of the lockdown. HM Govt appears to have decided it is not willing to pay to evacuate everyone back to the UK and would rather pax and airlines just sort it out themselves instead

The phrase new normal needs distanced from otherwise these rules and mask wearing will be in place long after Covid has ceased to be a threat to 3% of the population if everyone is happy to class it as normal.

See reply from another poster above

And my response to Government would be "how you determine this does not apply to those already in country on vacation." It seems positively bizarre to exclude someone from travelling to Spain whilst those who are already there can remain and return as planned? None of this makes sense, and the lack of information on why the decision was taken leads one to believe it was for reasons other than pure spikes in virus cases.
I note TUI have now applied the same dates as Jet2 for Balearics, Canaries & Mainland Spain..

Couldn't have put it better myself.

What would be the benefit of making people come back early? You still have to do 14 day quarantine whenever you come back.

The government aren’t excluding anyone from travelling to Spain. They have, of course, advised against all but essential travel and implemented a 2-week quarantine, thus, for obvious reasons, package holidays can’t go ahead as planned. What exactly is it that “does not apply” to those already in Spain? They will still have to quarantine on return so what would be the point in bringing them back earlier? Or do you mean that they should be left in Spain until further notice with no flight home? In which case, from a purely epidemiological perspective, that may be understandable but it would be a rather harsh stance.

Er, less time spent in a higher risk area means a lower chance of contracting the virus. Not everyone who gets Covid while abroad will simply be okay after 14 days back at home, even if spread to citizens back in the UK is limited by the quarantine.

Yes, but places like the Canaries are not a high risk area. So why the need to bring people back from a low risk area to a real high risk area such as Manchester?

Getting back to Jet2, what they are being criticised for is consolidating return flights, which mainly seems to mean people coming back earlier. So early return flights are available, but people don't want to use them.

What exactly are the government meant to do, send the troops in?

Why bizarre ? The obvious alternative was shown to be seriously daft when the first Covid-19 travel restrictions were brought into operation.
What might be sensible is for airlines to arrange to recognise each others tickets.

Very unlikely to happen - the penalties for acting as a cartel are very high. If an airline wants to be a monopolist, they will act in secret, not in public

To my mind recognising each others tickets during the Covid crisis is a proposal that ought to come from government. It was a system that used to work well on cross-channel ferries.

Imagine BA being considerate enough to provide carriage for a Virgin passenger - how long do you think BA would have to wait before Virgin forwarded the due amount?

Imagine how long Jet2 would have to wait for reimbursement from Ryanair if they gave carriage to a Ryanair passenger?

Can you visualise Ryanair paying £100 to TUI to get a Ryanair passenger back from Tenerife (someone who possibly only paid Ryanair £29.99 for his ticket)?

An airline is not a charity - it is a business (needless to say).

Putting 10 pax on a TUI flight might be cheaper than sending your own a/c to collect them.