Airport boss hopes for end to holiday traffic lights ‘chaos’
THE boss of East Midlands Airport has welcomed the Government’s “long overdue” travel announcement, hoping it will bring an end to “holiday chaos”.
Clare James, managing director at EMA, said the airport broadly welcomed the changes to the UK’s travel rules, however she called for tests to be scrapped altogether for non-Red List countries.
Ms James, who took charge last summer, said: “After all this confusion and a lack of certainty and clarity over tests, this review was definitely needed.”
The changes to travel, announced last week by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, will come into effect in October. Countries will be placed on a single Red List and previous green and amber ranked nations will be classed as the “rest of the world”.
The rules for Red List countries, where the coronavirus case rate is high, remain the same, meaning passengers returning from these nations must quarantine for ten full days on their return.
Ms James said the pandemic had had a “devastating” effect on EMA, but added: “Hopefully as a result of this now we’ll see consumer confidence and passenger confidence return.
“Hopefully it will help end the chaos that was ensuing as a result of the constant changing of countries to Amber and then Amber-plus.
“The confusion that caused just turned the public off travel completely.
“People want to travel but what they can’t cope with is the uncertainty and this constant change. We had one of the strictest travel regimes in Europe and arguably the world, so this simplification should go someway to restore this confidence.”
Another change means fully vaccinated travellers will no longer need to take PCR tests when returning from non-Red List countries, replacing them with lateral flow tests.
Ms James questioned why travellers still have to take tests upon return from countries with lower Covid infection rates than the UK.
“What we asked for was a risk-based approach.
“Testing costs still need to come down, although they have replaced the PCR with the antigen on return, it is still not an insignificant cost,” she added.
“So if we could simplify that and make it less prohibitive cost-wise, I think that would be helpful. But generally it’s a step in the right direction.”
EMA has experienced an instant increase in traffic as a result of the announcement, according to Ms James.
“We have seen an encouraging increase in car park booking and had feedback from our airline partners that they’re seeing things go up.
“Particularly for the October half term. I would hope that would roll on through to winter.
“Yesterday, we saw our biggest booking day across our group for car parking since before the pandemic starting. So that was a good day.”