Apr 15th 2021, 8:12
Airports will be unable to cope with the queues at borders if manual checks on passengers are retained when travel restarts at any volume, a senior executive at Heathrow has warned.
Heathrow Airport chief solutions officer Chris Garton described the situation as “untenable”.
He told MPs: “We need to see a dramatic improvement in performance at the border if we’re to have a restart of travel.”
Appearing before the Transport Select Committee yesterday, Garton said: “Our biggest issue is the performance at the borders.”
Non-essential travel to and from the UK remains banned but Garton said: “We’ve typically had queues of two hours and up to six hours [at the border].
Apr 9th 2021, 6:33
The need for costly PCR Covid tests when international travel resumes has been widely condemned from all sides of the travel industry.
The edict by the government’s Global Travel Taskforce was criticised as a “hammer blow” for business travel while independent agents and operators joined easyJet in hitting out at the costs involved for holidaymakers.
EasyJet, Aito and the Business Travel Association led the attack on the requirements as part of a traffic light system to be used to categorise countries based on risk, as previously announced.
Travellers will need to pay for tests when leaving and returning to the UK with the government yet to confirm that overseas travel can resume from May 17.
Wednesday, 3 March 2021 15:57
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak today (3 March) unveiled an additional £65 billion/$90 billion tranche of funding in a budget centred squarely on supporting the country as it emerges from lockdown.
An extension to the furlough scheme, support for the self-employed, business grants, loans and VAT cuts bring the government’s total fiscal support to more than £407 billion.
But there was no direct mention of, or tailored aid for, the beleaguered aviation industry in the Chancellorâs 2021 budget address to the House of Commons, prompting consternation from sector leaders.
âSLAP IN THE FACEâ
The Airport Operators Association (AOA) called the budget âblind to the impact of the near-complete shutdown of international travelâ.
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Pilots slam Norwegian Air over owed salaries following UK collapse
Norwegian Air last month said it will close its UK arm, which employed 1,100 people at Gatwick Airport (Getty Images,)
Pilots have hit back at Norwegian Air after it emerged the airline will not pay outstanding salaries to laid-off staff following the collapse of its UK operations.
The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) today said staff were demanding answers as to why they had been left with “absolutely nothing”.
Norwegian Air last month announced it would shut down Norwegian Air Resources (NAR), its UK crewing business that employed 1,100 people at Gatwick Airport. KPMG has been formally appointed as liquidator to NAR.