But he would say that, wouldn't he. Personally rather than an industry lobby group or politicians, I'd prefer to listen to the science.

Quarantine hotels will have to cover all arrivals otherwise it's just pointless. If only a small number of countries are on the list then people will just return to the UK via a 3rd country to avoid the requirement to quarantine. Which is exactly what happened with the 'Dublin Dodge' when the requirements to quarantine at home were introduced.

I'm sorry to say that if the plan is to prevent a yet undetected mutant strain entering the UK, quarantine hotels will run for most of 2021. And in all fairness, this should have happened a year ago.

There is not going to be a Summer 2021 holiday season in any meaningful sense.

DC3 Dave

It should be added it was an opinion from a government minister, not official governmental advice.

ATNotts

Which at the moment in Isreal, is indicating a 60-70% drop of hospitalisations and mortality on anyone over 60+ re: covid. Thanks to the vaccine. All good indications. So I stick to my point, he clearly is looking at Isreal, and other countries and coming to the same verdict.

But our doom & gloom MSM with their propaganda and the government with an ill qualified Health Secretary (what qualifications does he have to be in charge of the nations health by the way?) wouldn't want anyone to hear see or know. Better to have the UK living in fear than having hope.

LBAflyer22

Well said. Problem is ABTA do not make the UK laws regarding travel, if they did and I wish they did maybe we could all travel ?

I suspect there would be a pragmatic approach taken. A road map, criteria. I don't think anyone would be travelling at the moment, but then, they'd of probably shut the borders last April and banned flying, to the Far East & China, in January 2020 when it was all kicking off in China.

ABTA is a trade body and is paid by travel agents. It has no duties or responsibilities to anyone besides its members who are travel agents. Travel agents pay money to ABTA only if they think it's in their financial interest
If asked specific questions about healthcare or how to respond to Covid, ABTA's response would be something on the theme of "Sorry, cannot advise on that, best talk to your GP"
I very much doubt in Q1 2020 it would have chosen to push for all flights to China or the Far East to be stopped, as its members who sell holidays to China would have lost money

I would love to 'live and let live', but the number of deaths is approximately 1% of those infected, so with an infection rate of 50,000 it is quite reasonable to expect 500 deaths, which is why it has been so critical to try and reduce contact between people and it is now starting to show infection rates travelling in the right direction.

Globally it will be necessary to find ways of coping with COVID long term, but until the vast majority of the world's population have been vaccinated we will still need to have enhanced cleaning regimes, compulsory mask wearing and social-distancing as an absolute minimum. Initially it is also likely that localised restrictions and lock-downs will happen relatively frequently quite randomly in different countries, so there will certainly be the continued risk of short-term cancellations and disruptions occurring at very short notice.

Thinking positively, I don't think it would be unreasonable though to hope for a very limited amount of leisure travel within Europe later this Summer/Autumn (don't forget, capacity at many resorts will have to be limited too), with a similar situation next Winter, but perhaps returning to closer to normal by the Summer of 2022.

I think a few here haven’t grasped that air travel helps spread new variants around the world before they have even been identified. So far we are dealing with variants that are more transmissible not variants where the vaccines don’t work. Anyone certain that won’t happen because it seems to be dawning on governments around the world that it could happen.

As our numbers drop it might be the case that we and other governments make it even harder to travel to protect the general population while the virus remains out of control around the world. I just can’t see travel restrictions being lifted anytime soon and with the uproar about the queues at Heathrow the public seems to be demanding closing borders not relaxing them.

In practice, firms that meet this requirement would normally be: UK incorporated companies, including those with foreign-incorporated parents and with a genuine business in the UK; companies with significant employment in the UK; firms with their headquarters in the UK. We will also consider whether the company generates significant revenues in the UK, serves a large number of customers in the UK or has a number of operating sites in the UK.

From the article above

Money went to Wizzair UK Ltd, where it goes after that is not relevant as money went to a UK company which is what I have said all along.

Factually incorrect, merely trading on LSE has no relevance on ability to access loans under this scheme

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/mark...ncing-facility and Section A1 I refer you to.

Vaccination progress in Israel is providing interesting data. They are the furtherest along towards herd immunity (if such a thing can be made to work). It looks like they might reach this some time around easter. They have given over 40% a first shot so far and it is about five weeks afterwards that they get towards the 90% plus immunity from the studies, if we have 3 weeks between first and second vaccination and another 14 days after that for the full effect. They are proceeding at a rate that we can only dream of in the EU. Even if we speed up dramatically we might reasonably expect to get to a similar point in late summer.

There is an argument that once the vulnerable have been vaccinated (which should be far earlier) then we can go back to life as normal. Certainly as far as education is concerned I think the cost benefit is fairly clearly in favour of opening up. However as far as holiday travel is concerned the situation is rather more difficult. First of all not everyone wants to get vaccinated. Anecdotally we hear of certain groups where the take up is currently projected to be less than half. The new variant seems much more infectious and there is a chance that nearly everyone who is not vaccinated will eventually get it. This has the benefit that this group will also have immunity. But given the fact that it is not just killing the obviously vulnerable it is unlikely that people are going to rush out in order to infect themselves. So herd immunity looks a long way off.

What conclusions can we draw from the data so far? If the hospitals don't get overwhelmed mortality seems to be around one percent. It may be less but certainly not zero. At one percent we are talking about an increased mortality across Europe potentially in the hundreds of thousands. I may be wrong and would be happy to be corrected. But currently I am not sure about revalidating my Airbus rating which runs out in a couple of months.

Germany thinking about shutting down international flights
https://m.dw.com/en/germany-consider...ons/a-56349658

If Germany do that how many others will follow ?

I posted something yesterday ! It has either been removed or did not go through.

About a month ago I said that maybe International Leisure Travel needed to be stopped completely, the only flights should be either Cargo or Air Ambulance, I seemed to get some abuse for that, but now lots of people agree that should have happened months and months ago ?

Is that how New Zealand stopped the spread by closing their borders early on. I know they are less populated, about the same as Scotland, and have only had 25 deaths ?

Is the need for the economy to survive driving the Coronavirus ? Yesterday a woman on UK TV said the economy has the ability to rebuild a death does not !

Sad for the Industry but needs must.

Please if you can keep it revalidated do so, you can bet when things get back to normal ? You will be needed. How many others could do the same and let theirs lapse, may not be enough pilots then ?

Less populated and less than one third of the population density.
And if you think that geographic remoteness and low density don't matter, then you have to explain why Highlands and Islands health boards have the lowest number of cases in Scotland.

NZ is a great success story and I'd much rather be there right now, the irony is that their reopening to the world relies heavily on a vaccine being developed and produced elsewhere and delivered to their doorstep.

I'm not sure I would. NZ is following an unrealistic policy of eradicating the virus, or keeping NZ free of it, which involves essentially imprisoning it's population within NZ territory for the foreseeable, possibly long term future. At some stage we have to accept that how ever much we try and mitigate it's effects, we are going, as world, to have to live with the virus and the risks that go with it.

Vaccination and more effective treatments form part of that "living with it" and with luck should enable the resumption of travel sometime in the next 12 months.

100% agree. To close a border to all and sundry because someone sneezed is unsustainable. And they are still getting cases despite this policy. It is hard to say that the virus is globally endemic but it is reality.

These new rules wouldn't have looked out of place in the German Democratic Republic:-

Whilst from a UK perspective I fully understand and agree with the "hotel quarantine" rules for arrivals, and actually would agree with Labour that they shouldn't be restricted to just the red list nations, when it comes to people leaving the UK surely the risk lies with the country in which the arrive to decide whether they should or shouldn't travel, not up to the UK to stop them leaving. Patel has overstepped the mark, but I doubt that, without the European Court to fall back on anyone will successfully challenge her.

What is does do is render anything other than very necessary travel outside the UK pretty well impossible and is just more bad news for the travel industry. One only hopes that the government doesn't keep them in place for a minute longer than Covid-19 makes them, in their eyes, necessary. However with Pritti Patel in charge I'm not holding out much hope of that. She comes across as authoritarian, and I think it very likely she quite enjoys the power she appears to have and will be reluctant to give it away.

As you say a bad day for the travel industry (UK), correct me if I am wrong but I am sure I heard Nicolas Sturgeon has added her piece by saying the new restrictions from Pritti Patel do not go far enough. I wonder what she has planned for Scotland ?

People are dreaming if they think that these restrictions are going to be temporary. The days of being able to freely travel as a UK citizen are gone for good as there is absolutely no chance of the government ever giving up the powers that they have appropriated for themselves.

helipixman

Should be for all arrivals. What is to stop some one from a hot country going to another and then on to the UK and saying oh no I have not been their. Ie from Portugal drive into Spain or get a train and then fly to the UK.

scr1

If the people are that devious it would have to go back to the old stamp in the passport from each country visited and that will prove where you have been !

This is not about completely stopping traffic 100 %
If this reduces traffic to just 2% of the level in November 2020, then it will achieve its aims

I feel that the general public would now be prepared to sacrifice aviation for the health of the nation and to keep new variants out of the country while the airlines view is to fly and be damned. If airlines fail the same directors will just create phoenix airlines and start again but without the debt. By 2022 no one will be able to afford a holiday anyway so why support a dead duck industry?

From what most people are indicating on here - overseas holidays are gone for a long while. Back to the good old staycation, support the UK economy, get it back on its feet, look foward to traffic jams on UK holiday routes and then possibly have someone by the name of Greta moaning about the traffic pollution we are causing.

Damned if we do and damned if we dont ? I am 62 and I am not sure I will see the world get back to normal in whatever time I have left. If I was not in the Sky is was looking skyward - oh how things have changed - more chance of seeing a UFO where I live than an actual aircraft !

scr1

It’s really not that easy at the moment. And most EU countries have implemented similar controls.

Having arrived at LHR last week, it took 2 hours for border force to clear one plane load of passengers. How on earth do they think they will manage to check papers, collect baggage and transport passengers to hotels. It will be chaos.

I'll just add my 2 penn'orth to the debate having recently experienced the quarantine regime from the other side...

Normally I spend my winter flying balloons in Bagan, Myanmar and acting as the CTO of the largest balloon maintenance organisation in Asia. Obviously this year things are rather different... However our boss decided to get a few of us back to fly the local pax we had booked and in the hope that things might improve later in the season; We had our own views on the likelihood of this but hey, they're paying and this is my full time job...

Anyway, we eventually got permission to enter the country from the various ministries and embassies and ended up on a flight from Paris via one of the 'Stans repatriating ship crews and delivering French heli pilots/engineers working here in support of the oil and gas industry in mid November. (Just getting to Paris from near FRA was an adventure in itself as our flight was canx as were two trains!)
We had to have a PCR within 72hrs of the flight and also to have self isolated for a week previously. The seating on board was arranged such that the middle seat was free between people to maintain distancing.
We eventually arrived in Yangon to be met with ground staff kitted out in full hazmat gear, and were shepherded onto a bus and taken to a transit lounge where we were taken by taxi(driver having had a negative test beforehand) to the basement of our government selected hotel( a smart international chain establishment) whereby we were processed by the hotel staff (again in full gear) individually through an airlock door system with everything being disinfected as we moved or touched anything. We were then directed to our hotel room via a service lift and ordered not to leave on pain of a 500$ per person fine. The lift wasn't useable from the floor we were on. Food was delivered 3 times a day by staff knocking on the door; it was served with plastic cutlery and plates that were taken away and burnt after use(don't mention the environment:{). The housekeeping staff were not allowed access for the week.
After 4 days we were escorted down to the underground car park for another PCR test again under strict conditions, and immediately escorted back to the room. If the results were negative you could stay in the hotel, however it was rumoured in a case of a positive result it was off to a government quarantine facility:sad:. At the end of the week we were tested again and then released directly into a taxi limo for the 8hr drive up to Bagan. The driver had in the previous 24hrs tested negative ... On the journey we were subjected to several spot checks plus controls at every Division(county) boundary, whereby our papers, Covid tests and permissions to travel were checked. At the city boundary we had to change vehicle as our driver wasn't allowed to enter as he was from a different division and another negative tested driver picked us up and took us to our hotel/home. Here we were instructed we could move around the hotel but not permitted to leave for a week. Masks had to be worn when outside of your room at all times by everyone in the hotel. After a week, providing we were asymptomatic we were released into the real world...
Obviously all hotels and most restaurants were closed and everyone without fail was wearing a mask(and for the most part still are) and distancing as per the rules. Up until last weekend there was a curfew from midnight until 0400 and there was a checkpoint restricting movement into the different parts of Bagan.
Some quarters(districts) had erected their own barriers/checkpoints to keep non residents out of their bit of town.
There were/are various reasons for all this: 1. No real health care system outside of the emergency hospitals, 2. The penalties for disobeying the rules(The authorities don't mess around here) and 3. The fear of the disease spreading as per the rest of the world.

As this area lives from tourism then they're desperate to get back to normal but at the same time in no rush to open borders before the situation is contained enough to be safe. The international airport has been closed to all but freight and repatriation flights since march last year and all land borders have been closed until very recently. Our local airport is open for limited domestic flights from certain 'safe' areas, but all travellers must have a negative PCR test before travelling.

Up until now understandably we haven't been given permission to recommence flying but there is hope that rules will be relaxed in early February, however initially that will only be for currency/check flights. How long we continue to sit here hoping is anyone's guess we can all see the reasoning for the delays and just have to take a leaf out of the locals and be v very Buddhist about it all.

The results however speak for themselves with probably one of the lowest infection and death rates in the world even allowing for some massaging of figures. We've had 4 cases here in the time we've been here in an area with a population of around 50-60,000 people, and one of those turned out to be negative. 1 person has apparently died here but he was from outside the area(truck driver who'd avoided getting a test when he left Yangon).

My point is that this strict quarantine for EVERYONE entering the country and the strict control of EVERYONE moving around the country, plus the locking down of areas with more cases(Yangon, Mandalay) at different times has paid dividends, and the UK and the rest of Europe could learn a lot from it...

As a case in point, when I returned to Germany last march on one of the last flights out of Asia there were NO controls whatsoever regarding where I'd been or where I was going. I also worked in France last summer(A whole story in itself) and again crossed over to Germany on my return with no checks.
I briefly visited the UK in September to renew my medical and was horrified to find I was boarding a flight that was jam packed with people:uhoh: Masks were worn however but distancing was impossible. Again no controls on arrival at LHR and I made my way through a half deserted airport to the bus station. I caught a bus to Wiltshire to pick up a car from mate. On board the bus there were only seats available on the window seats, so basically each aisle seat was empty for distancing.
My experience over the long weekend I was over ranged from strict controls at my AME for my medical and also for the CAP611 fire/first aid course, to blatant disregard for the rules in most other places. I then reversed the procedure on my return and boarded the fully loaded aircraft back to FRA...
I also had to carry out some inspections in the NL in November and was horrified to discover after leaving masked up Germany that NO-ONE was required to wear masks and again there were no border controls either way. I kept my mask on at all times and was given some very strange looks over the weekend:ugh:

The lack of joined up thinking amongst the European nations and the UK means that I can't see that there's going to be any return to normality in the near or mid-future. The only hope is that these vaccines work and that despite the various governments and individuals attitudes there will be some sort of new normalcy restored...

Sorry for the long rambling post- I hope it makes sense:\

I'll try and add some pics...
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ff00531ef2.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....734d5145cd.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ada821228b.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c03c84aaad.jpg

From The Financial Times, 28th Jan 2021

Easyjet has announced a further reduction in services for the start of 2021
https://www.ft.com/content/3e0d8624-...0-df9b405ba17b