Now airlines cash in on f lights to Portugal
FLIGHT prices to Portugal have rocketed eightfold after the Government announced it would be removed from the quarantine list.
Families scrambling to book lastminute summer getaways before pupils return to school next month were faced with return fares of more than £1,300.
It came as 20,000 British holidaymakers faced a rush to escape Croatia yesterday following the decision to add the country to the quarantine list, along with Austria and Trinidad and Tobago.
Flights with BA from London to Faro – the Algarve’s main airport – leaving next Friday and returning on September 2 are being sold for £1,362. Flights on these dates would usually sell for between £60 and £160.
A BA flight from Glasgow to Faro leaving on Monday and returning on Saturday costs a single passenger £1,039.38 via Heathrow.
Budget airline Ryanair is asking for £162.99 for a one-way from Glasgow to Faro on Friday. This is more than double the usual asking price for August – typically £71.
BA said it was upgrading the aircraft size on existing services and adding more flights to its schedule next week in response to demand.
A spokesman said: ‘We have not gone, “Oh my God, let’s increase the prices there”, it’s just the way the flights system works.’
Skyscanner, the flight comparison website, reported a 2,000 per cent spike in bookings immediately following the official announcement, and the day’s booking volumes were 15 times more than the daily average for the previous week.
More than 2.1million British tourists visit Portugal a year.
The country ended its long wait for a ‘travel corridor’ on Thursday evening, with Britons returning from the Iberian nation after 4am this morning no longer required to quarantine for 14 days. Manuel Lobo Antunes, Portugal’s ambassador to the UK, told the Mail yesterday: ‘British tourists should come to Portugal in full confidence that we will welcome you and offer the very best in friendship and hospitality. So please don’t hesitate.’
A spokesman for Tui, which is resuming holidays to Portugal next Saturday, said: ‘The increase in interest in Portugal is absolutely ginormous. Nobody was looking at Portugal, now everyone is.’
The number of cases in Portugal over seven days is now 14.1 per 100,000 people.
It remains above Italy on 6.4 and the UK on 11. The Government’s threshold is 20. Spain is on 86.4 and France 30.5, while Croatia is now on 31.4 – leading to panicked scenes at airports in destinations such as Split.
BA laid on extra flights home but the last seats were almost seven times as expensive as normal – £275 per passenger.
A family of four would have to pay more than £1,000 to get home before restrictions kicked in.
Families unable to get a flight home will have to self-isolate for 14 days, meaning children will miss the beginning of the new school term.
Liam and Jodie, a couple from Keighley, West Yorkshire, were forced to pay £800 to travel home from Croatia via Munich in order to beat the deadline, after finding it impossible to book a direct flight in time.
‘There wasn’t an alternative,’ Liam said. ‘The only other flights available were with stops in Spain through Ryanair, but then we would have to quarantine anyway.’