With travel depressed during months of lockdowns, Europe’s airlines looked forward to the resumption of travel within Europe, but now they’re complaining that constantly changing go/no-go zones and quarantine rules are whiplashing them and their profits.
Through their association Airlines for Europe (A4E) they’ve called on all of Europe’s governments to agree on a common set of rules about travel and testing. They’re also supporting the EU Commission’s call for a single color-coded map of areas where the virus risk is high so travel can be restricted by region rather than national borders. That would allow travel to low-risk areas of countries with high overall number.
Because of the changing rules, passenger traffic, which had been inching up, has dropped off again sharply, especially when travelers from the UK were forced to cut short vacations in several countries and hurry home to arrive before they would have been quarantined.
The association is also calling for reliance on “quick and reliable Covid-19 tests” and for quarantines to be only used as a last resort, and for excluding ‘low-risk’ passengers such as aircraft crew from restrictions. Association director Thomas Reynaert told reporters that “A unified European testing programme is urgently needed if we are to have any chance of restoring passenger confidence.”
