Are there any restrictions in place for air travel between England and Scotland? It seems that both countries will have different set of rules tomorrow, it all seems to be confusing.

In Scotland, you are advised to avoid unnecessary travel to the other UK countries.

In England (from tomorrow) you are not allowed to travel to elsewhere in the UK, unless for work, education or other legally permitted reasons.

Those apply to any mode of transport.

This situation must have been helped by the lack of airspace congestion, lack of road congestion, smaller loads, etc. So I would expect things to be more punctual, ceteris paribus.

I think also with some noticeable exceptions the load factor means few planes are leaving 90% full which makes it easier to load everybody quicker.

And next week in Scotland you could be fined for travelling between Glasgow Tier 3 to Oban Tier 2 but can fly to some oversea's destinations with no problems! O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!

Germany and Sweden to be moved to the naughty list effective Saturday morning

A number of airlines give out masks to pax when they board. Most seem to dish out unbranded standard pale blue masks, but today I saw my first corporate branded mask (and the design of the print was bold and easily recognisable) - effectively making the wearer into a mobile advert for the airline. How long before this becomes mainstream ?

Denmark added to the UK's naughty list effective immediately

Yes, but only allegedly because of the risk from mink. How many people going from UK to Denmark are likely to come into contact with people working in mink farms etc?
We in England are banned from taking holidays at the moment anyway, so any trip between the 2 countries is most likely to be for business reasons, and I don't think that the mink trade is that significant.... would be a more effective step if the UK could stop its infected politicians travelling domestically on public transport :-(

Except that there is little evidence that people are getting infected on public transport.

Where are people getting infected? Genuine question. Is there reliable research on it?
Track and trace is not a reliable source. You can take 20 buses, visit 100 shops in a day and then go to the pub and they'll only take the details of the pub.

I believe that the evidence is that most people are infected inside houses.

To be fair the need for a mask in almost any public setting in most of the world has been mandatory for some time now and airlines don't exactly hide this fact either. We can argue about the reasons and effectiveness, but if you turn up to fly without your own mask at this stage in the game then you deserve to become a mobile advert to be honest. Anyone who has a genuine medical exemption from mask wearing really shouldn't be flying right now as they clearly shouldn't be mixing with others in close quarters in the first place.

I'm surprised it's taken this long...

Now on the Very Very naughty list, entry banned

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54851042

This is no joking matter. A new strain of Corona has spread from mink to humans making the new vaccines potentially ineffective. U.K. citizens returning from Denmark should be placed in supervised quarantine. Those already here should be taken into supervised quarantine together with their family members.

Just need to look at the departure board from Copenhagen to see where this new strain could spread to by tomorrow. Those working on mink farms are mainly Eastern European’s which is a major risk to Europe.

In that case, one assumes that the virus can be passed to and from any animal. So where do we go with this, slaughter all pet dogs and cats - just to be sure !

But that is a wrong assumption!

I seem to remember big cats at a zoo somewhere in the U.S in the early day being diagnosed with the virus, so I don’t think it’s too incorrect an assumption to be made.

BA and Ryanair pilots and cabin crew now have to quarantine for 14 days if they have flown out of Denmark from today.

I read that around 200 people now have this new strain in Denmark. I can remember reading about a new virus in China around last Christmas. Now look where we are.

So just round up people and their families, then lock them up on the basis they visited a country. Covid-19 has really brought out the desire of many to emulate the Stasi in East Germany with a glee that even the Stasi would struggle to understand.

Denmark has 1050 cases today to get to 54k cases and its death rate per million is 128 while the UKs is 719 but seems to be lets blame Denmark.

Don't give the paranoid any more ideas, puhlease :=:ugh:

The only thing you can rely on is that people caught it from someone else or something else.

“The Plebeians are beginning to question the narrative. What else do we have in the fear box”

So we do nothing and just hope this new stain doesn’t get in here. Great plan Recedo. In January this year we had no cases and the last thing we need is a new variant which requires a whole new vaccine but then the virus is fake and no worse than a little cold.

If the UK was to put all people arriving from Denmark into Govt controlled quarantine, I would expect other countries in Europe to be taking similiar actions. AFAIK, neither Sweden nor Germany as Denmark's immediate neighbours are taking special action with regards to the mink cases in Denmark. I cannot see other countries in Europe changing their policy towards travellers from Denmark especially because of the mink farms - ie the UK seems to already be much more strict on this issue than countries in the EU. Other countries in Europe seem content for the Danes to manage the response on the basis that Denmark is relatively transparent (corruption is low) and seems to show determination to get this under control

The UK alone significantly increasing its policy response and imposing a lock-everyone-up policy is unlikely to save the effectiveness of any new vaccine

Can you provide scientific fact that the strain did not start in the UK ?

The virus has a total 2.5% fatality rate on people who have tested positive, down from 3% 2 month ago. Of current case 1% are serious / critical. All the while Aviation and Economies are destroyed.

UK has had 1.3 Million cases so relatively easily people could argue that UK residents should be brought to a giant internment game and made to isolate. Thankfully that ridiculous idea will not happen.

Not all economies. China's 3rd quarter GDP +4.9%...

Airline shares in the UK have soared this morning on news of a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine breakthrough.

This may also help too https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...re_article-top

Amazing how the news on Phalanx was released as soon as US Presidential election result was released.

Politics...Rough init.

Its a nice conspiracy that it was held back to end Trump but in reality Election Day itself was nearly a week ago and the damage was done with postals in the weeks before that.

It looks like Europe is moving away from a "borders closed" approach and instead moving towards a "you must show a PCR test certificate from the last 72 hours on arrival" approach when entering a country, with the cost of the PCR test borne by the traveller - approx GBP 100 or EUR 110
This might be acceptable to those travelling for an annual 2 week holiday or intending to stay for a month or longer because of work, but maybe less acceptable for those intending to spend only a few days away from home - e.g. business travel or leisure weekend break

Airlines with a strong domestic network (e.g. SAS), reliant on migrant workers (e.g. Wizzair) or beach package holiday centric like TUI will presumably be be less affected but I'm wondering how the likes of Easyjet and Ryanair might be affected - paying an extra GBP 200+ in tests per person for a weekend in (e.g.) Barcelona isn't great. Will this continue to depress air travel demand to a significant extent ?

Yes, they clearly sat on the news until after the election.

Gosh, it's actually easier than you might think, this evidence-free assertion lark, I think I've got the hang of it now. :ugh:

I think that actually that view, being peddled by the "Orange One" and his cohorts is more of an unfounded conspiracy theory. Supposing that Pfizer did make a conscious decision to delay an announcement on this vaccine, then this just serves to illustrate just how bad relationships were between the top in the USA and the pharmaceutical industry with whom the President should have been closely working. it would be a damning indictment not of the company, but of US leadership.

Personally, though, I don't buy it.

Nothing but the usual tirade of unfounded allegations and lies from the (soon to be) former leader of the USA.

Turning back to the impact on air travel, the euphoria on the stock market and in the media is presently quite unjustified. Sure it a a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, however the (only) vaccine has yet to get regulatory approval, and the population sectors most likely to travel for leisure will be way down the pecking order for getting vaccinated when vaccines eventually start being rolled out. When the hangover kicks in after yesterdays party watch the travel stocks head south again on the markets, as realisation kicks in that there may as a result be a partial recovery in travel next year, it won't be back to business as usual for a couple of seasons.

Interestingly, Pfizer's CEO has stated that he didn't seek Government funding because "it always comes with strings attached" and he wanted to give his scientists free rein. Sounds like a victory for free enterprise.