BORDER CHAOS
With queues of up to SIX HOURS at Heathrow, airport bosses plead for more officers before holidays restart
HOLIDAYMAKERS face border chaos this summer unless the Home Office deploys more resources at airports and ports, MPs were told yesterday.
Heathrow warned the situation was already ‘becoming untenable’ and that travellers in recent days have been queueing at the border for up to six hours.
Police are also having to be called in to deal with angry passengers.
But there was better news from Greece, with the country saying it will start admitting fully vaccinated Britons.
Heathrow official Chris Garton told MPs on the Commons transport committee the airport was seeing between 10,000 and 15,000 arrivals a day but current border resources can’t cope.
Before the pandemic, Britain’s biggest airport saw around 125,000 arrivals a day and current levels will increase once holidays get under way again under the Government’s ‘traffic light’ system for restarting international travel.
Mr Garton, the airport’s chief solutions
‘Many areas are unanswered’
officer, told the committee the bottlenecks were the result of every passenger needing to be thoroughly vetted.
They have to be checked manually for having filled out a ‘passenger locator form’ – which gives their contact details and where they are staying – for proof of a negative Covid test within 72 hours and for having booked either a hotel quarantine or testing package, depending on where they have travelled from.
He said ‘automating’ the process by re-opening electronic passport gates was crucial.
He added: ‘Typically we have 10,000 to 15,000 arriving. More than half of them are experiencing delays in excess of two or three hours and it is a daily occurrence.
‘ We want to see more rapid progress to automate the process to enable those travellers to keep flowing. We’ve typically had queues well in excess of two hours and up to six hours in recent days.’
He said hitting 100 per cent of passengers with ‘a whole host of new checks’ has put a ‘tremendous burden on officers at the border’. ‘ The Home Office has not provided them with additional officers’, he said. ‘We would like to see more resources at the border anyway, but Covid has just made that so much worse.
‘We’re starting to see disruption in some of the arriving passengers. We’re even having to involve the police service. It’s a problem today, it will become a much bigger problem after May 17.’ This date is the earliest holidays and international travel can re-start under the Government’s roadmap.
A report by the global travel taskforce, led by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, last week pledged to fully digitise the passenger locator forms which travellers must fill in before boarding UK- bound planes, trains and ships. It would mean returning holidaymakers being able to use their passports at e-gates.
The committee heard from other industry chiefs who tore into the taskforce’s report, branding it ‘illogical’, ‘vague’ and ‘too cautious’.
They criticised the fact that countries won’t be categorised as green, amber or red until early next month and a lack of detail on how they will move between the colours.
Travellers to green countries will have to take one pre- departure test as well as a post-arrival swab on day two. Amber arrivals will have to self-isolate at home for ten days and red country travellers will have to quarantine in hotels.
Simon McNamara, UK and Ireland chief for the International Air Transport Association, said: ‘There’s many areas that are still unanswered. It’s very vague.’
He also hit out at there being ‘no reference’ to whether vaccinated people can expect fewer testing and quarantine requirements.
He said: ‘The UK is absolutely not taking advantage of the fact it’s protected the most vulnerable... it seems illogical.’
Mark Tanzer, chief executive of travel organisation Abta, said the report was ‘over- cautious and doesn’t recognise the huge change that vaccination has created’.
Aviation minister Robert Courts was asked by the chairman of the committee, Huw Merriman MP, why countries have not yet been graded green, amber or red. Mr Courts said: ‘It’s too early at the moment.’
Yesterday Greece paved the way for holidays there in less than five weeks.
From next week British travellers who show proof of being fully vaccinated or a negative test taken within 72 hours will no longer have to quarantine on arrival.
It means quarantine-free holidays there will be possible if the foreign travel ban is lifted on May 17. Greece would also have to be on the green list of destinations.