FOREIGN HOLS TO COSTA PACKET
■ ONLY WEALTHY CAN PAY FOR TRAVEL TODAY, EASYJET BOSS WARNS ■ £420 PRICE PER PERSON FOR COVID TESTS JUST TOO HIGH FOR MOST
FOREIGN holidays this summer could be out of reach to all but the wealthy as it emerged families may have to pay up to £420 per person for Covid testing.
Government plans to make travellers returning from low-risk countries pay for at least two UK coronavirus tests means sunshine trips abroad ‘ will be for people who can afford it’, easyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren said.
Under the rules, travellers face ‘more complexities and cost’ as part of a new traffic lights-style system ranking countries by risk, he warned.
According to consumer group Which?, there are currently a necessary five private tests costing a total £420 for return trips to France – along with £370 for five for Greece, £330 for four for Spain, £332 for four for the US and £310 for five for Italy. These include a pre-departure £120 PCR test in the UK plus another £190 two-test package after returning home.
Mr Lundgren suggested PCR tests be scrapped for the countries deemed lowest-risk – or else at least allow people to take cheaper lateral flow tests instead.
Critics rounded on the testing system after Boris Johnson announced on Monday each country’s traffic light assessment would take into account factors such as the proportion of its population being vaccinated, rates of
infection and emerging new variants. Under the scheme, travellers returning from countries rated ‘green’ will not be required to self-isolate, although pre-departure and post-arrival tests will still be necessary. The Global Travel Taskforce is due to report on Monday on whether the proposed May 17 reopening of non-essential foreign travel can go ahead.
Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, said: ‘Testing will be essential for restarting travel safely, but private tests in the UK are currently too expensive and risk pricing most people out of travel.
‘Other countries have found solutions to reduce the cost of private testing, so if the government is serious about making travel safe and affordable when it restarts, it must urgently look at ways to reduce these expenses.’
Polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, swab tests are processed in a laboratory, whereas lateral flow device swabs tests give results in 30 minutes.
Describing PCR tests as ‘way over and above what the cost is of an average easyJet fare’, Mr Lundgren told BBC Breakfast: ‘You wouldn’t open up international travel for everyone, you would open up international travel for people who can afford it.
‘I don’t think that is fair, and I don’t think it is necessarily established from a medical and scientific point of view that is the right thing to do.’ He said if the government’s decision was to ‘ go down that route’ then the ‘cheaper and more accessible’ lateral flow testing should be used.
Virgin Atlantic chief executive Shai Weiss said: ‘ Passengers travelling to and from “green” countries should be able to do so freely, without testing or quarantine at all, and vaccinated passengers travelling to and from “amber” countries should not face testing or quarantine.’
He identified the US, Israel and the Caribbean as among those destinations which should be declared ‘green’ once some international travel is approved – while Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye called for the United Arab Emirates to be included too.
Mr Johnson later said that Mr Lundgren was ‘right to focus on this issue’. The prime minister added: ‘We’re going to see what we can do to make things as flexible and as affordable as possible.
‘We have to be realistic – a lot of the destinations that we want to go to at the moment are suffering a new wave of the illness. I know how impatient people are to book their holidays if they possibly can but I think we just have to be prudent at this stage.’