First piece of good news for a while if it materialises. Reported in the Daily Telegraph.

Bosses of the travel and hospitality industry have been privately assured by the Government that “air bridges” will be introduced for foreign summer holidays from June 29 to replace blanket quarantine.
The Quash Quarantine group of more than 500 of the biggest names in the industry said that as a result they would suspend their threatened legal action to overturn quaratntine.

I wouldn't trust any "private assurances" from this government; well any government actually. If I were them I'd carry on with the legal challenge unless or until the government came out with their plan. I'm reasonably confident they want to extricate themselves from this unnecessary policy, but they also want to find a way of doing so without saying "we made a mistake"; only three words, but throughout this whole episode, three words that not one government minister or special advisor has felt able to utter.

ATNotts
Come on ATN you have been around the block a few times, they never admit mistakes least of all this lot. The last politician I heard apologise, and indeed fall on his sword was Lord Carrington after the Falklands invasion. He was Foreign Sec (as you may remember) and felt responsible that it had occurred on his watch so to speak, and he did the honourable thing, even though he and indeed his dept were not entirely to blame for the mixed messages picked up by Argentina. I am deeply sorry but BJ and current incumbents in cabinet would struggle to spell apologise, never mind know what it means.

Kind regards
Mr Mac

They would never admit they are wrong on quarantine but imagine some truth in O'Leary that they'd possibly welcome the courts over turning it or will try and massively water it down with air bridges.

For how long has our Government been deciding on wether to Quarantine for 14 days, change their minds ? Then possible air bridges rumbling on for over a month. They are constantly screwing with peoples travel plans/holidays. Get a grip and sort it out so people at least know what they can or cannot do. The FCO still advises against all non essential travel.
I guess in the end they might cave in to pressure from the big travel bosses who are desperate to get your money but still reluctant to hand out refunds ?

It's never good for Govt to propose a policy because it looks good to the populist press, only for the courts to strike it down

This is not about a 25 year old kid setting up a software company with very little liability if it goes bust - this is national Govt with huge resources, affecting millions of people who have to get things right

The FCO advise is supposedly about to change for low infection countries...

The issue at the moment is they have not really given airlines/tourism any sort of ability to try and plan. For example hospitality as a rule and theme parks are working to the 4th July date so they've been left in limbo to a degree,

Seeing as few people know the finer details of this virus and it could easily "flare up" again, so anything more than a couple of weeks planning is bordering on wishful thinking.

Now it seems UK tourists have been given another major blow as Spain not dicussing the possibilty of an air bridge. Countries playing tit for tat again ? Well its their economy that will suffer... hell mend them ? There other more welcoming countries we can go to !

If they were just playing politics that would be fine and dandy, but they're not, they're looking at raw data, and with the UK still recording 1,000 plus new cases per day the risk, at present, is probably for the Spanish too high. When we eventually get down to the mid hundreds on a regular basis then we stand a chance of traveling again. One thing the UK quarantine has achieved it has saved the UK blushes when other countries demand we get our house in order before inflicting our Covid-19 on nations who have done a better job, or perhaps being more charitable, be further along the curve.

I am not sure how in context this actually is... they've said they are not discussing an air bridge but want a European wide system in place so didn't say its a no entry but if its set up and we agree to take part then we'd be treated like the rest of the EU and Schengen area's.

Cue papers saying summer in Spain is over when they've not said that, just they'd prefer looking at a pan European agreement rather than individual but would go that route if that can't be agreed.

If anything a EU/UK/Iceland/Norway/Switzerland system makes more sense than hundreds of separate agreements with Europe in theory coming out of the worst of the pandemic and likely by July all being in a relatively low infection state IF things carry on the trend they currently are.

It is a bit messy though as Portugal want to welcome us with open arms and I believe you can cross into Spain as it stands now from there!

valefan16

Reported on German media today, from 15th June limited numbers of German tourists are going to be permitted to travel to the Balearics at a pilot to assess how the hotels, restaurants, bars etc are prepared for the opening of the season more generally from 1st July. I think you will find, though I don't know, that Swedes may not be welcome because of their high numbers of new cases (they are not included in the Norway / Denmark travel bubble at present for this reason) and the UK may fall into that excluded group for the same reason. I don't expect that at this stage Russians will be welcomed by Spain either. They have been through the mill and come out the other side and laudably they would appear to be putting health before the economy to reduce the chances of a new outbreak.

They haven't said no UK at the moment though and bear in mind we have over 3 weeks until July at this point, by which time if the trend continues we will be at a low level surely? From 2500 new infections less than 2 weeks ago we are now posting 1200-1500 today so if that continues we will be looking at below 1000 in the next few days. In 3 weeks we would hope to be posting low figures unless something goes very wrong. (these drops in infection figures also linked in with higher testing too)

That depends upon how much damage the selfish feckwits crowding the beaches and demonstrating in various cities have done, and that won't be clear for between the next 7 - 14 days.

The beaches had been going on for a few weeks now so would of expected some sort of spike if it was going to happen there. It is harder to spread outside though and of course when on the beach usually hot weather. Hopefully it can be non effective and we can all start to get more normality back. The protests in poorer weather may be an issue I guess.

If we all think it’s just the U.K. though who are rebellious, I notice a bar in Mykonos has been forced to close for 60 days after multiple warnings for people crowding the bar! So not just an English problem.

I think the summer will see the virus continue to decline in Europe certainly, the big worry would be November time, that’s when the danger will be and need to be prepared in case it does hit hard again as the cold weather and people congregating indoors, Xmas parties and the like.

Something to lighten the mood a little, someone we see regularly on the TV at the moment, our Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is a fixed wing PPL holder and has owned a Grumman AA5 light aircaft and possibly still owns a Piper PA32R N51AH. Apparently his hobby/passion is flying, lets hope his passion spills over to commercial flying and he can help airlines to get flying again.

Great safe way to start a holiday? I do wonder how many of those that have complained about social distancing at schools are still hoping to take their kids away for their summer holidays.

2m, 1.5m or even 1m social distancing rules enforceable when flying?

I am still struggling to understand that if schools are not seen as safe how these two photos are seen as an acceptable way to transport children and their parents.

https://i.imgur.com/IYM1V98.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/qVsFJva.jpg

There's clearly no way in which any sort of meaningful social distancing is possible in most mass transport situations; I suppose one exception is the Eurotunnel car shuttle where, if remaining in your vehicle is made a rule that is enforced with no wandering around the train, and the toilets all locked the traveling group is essentially maintaining separation within their own travel bubble.

The world has to work out how it is going to live with Covid-19 at an acceptably low level within the community otherwise the economic system that we have lived with for decades just isn't going to be sustainable. If we don't want any level of risk then the economic model has to change. Hard choices have to be made and I'm not certain that there are many politicians fit to make those decisions with any competence.

ATNotts
Perhaps we all move to NZ ?

However back in the real world I think we will all have to learn to live with it. It is another risk to add to those which we all have to live with from the moment we awake each day. Interestingly we have just received the blood test for Covid 19 antibodies, as quite a number of staff including myself believed we have had it. These tests were conducted by a doctor drawing blood and sending to the lab in Germany, and were not the finger prick home testing. Surprisingly given the amount of travel we all do, we were all negative for anti bodies. The doctor did say there was an extremely bad bug running around Europe during December - March which caused severe respiratory infection, with the resultant infection producing copious phlegm and indeed blood. He said we were not the only people to mistake this for Covid 19.

Kind regards
Mr Mac

I am still struggling to understand that if schools are not seen as safe how these two photos are seen as an acceptable way to transport children and their parents.
No children and their parents on a flight,what a pleasure,as for the virus,if it hangs around as long as HIV with all these bonkers restrictions then are truly f______!