Before 2020 is out, we’re definitely going on holiday. If there’s anywhere left to go, that is...

FOUR weeks tomorrow we take to the skies for a fortnight’s sunshine. And, I must say, I can hardly wait to find out where we are allowed to fly to.

It will be interesting, too, to see who is prepared to fly us there and whether they will still be trading when the time comes to fly us back.

So much unknown; so many variables. But you will agree, I am sure, that having a notional departure date and preferred direction of travel (south) is a commendable start to holiday planning in 2020.

Truth be told, our plans were much more advanced months ago. Having weathered the disappointment of cancelled flights to Mallorca back in June when coronavirus infection levels were starting to taper off, my partner and I rebooked these flights for mid-September, by which time, surely, the worst would be far behind us.

It had to be over by then, didn’t it? Airlines would never survive the hit if bread and butter routes such as Glasgow to Palma or Edinburgh to Alicante were still knocked out by the end of the season.

Yet here we are, end of the season almost in sight and, everywhere we look, foreign holidays falling like ninepins, airlines nosediving.

British Airways is planning to cut 12,000 jobs and has retired its entire fleet of jumbo jets as a direct result of the pandemic.

EasyJet said as far back as May that it would need to axe 4,500 of its staff, and days ago it announced the closure of bases at three English airports. All of them will suffer drastic downturns as a result.

Ryanair is cutting flights by 20 per cent next month, having increased them for August. Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, talked darkly of ‘further pay cuts and job losses if things get worse, not better’. Things got worse.

Days ago Jet2 said it was making more than 100 pilots redundant across its bases, which include Edinburgh and Glasgow airports.

The decision, made with ‘great distress and deep regret’, was ‘entirely caused’ by the coronavirus crisis. How many customers have those carriers alone had to let down by now, do you suppose? Tens of millions?

The long-expected email from BA arrived the other day, confirming that two of the flights we rebooked for September after the June ones were cancelled were now also cancelled.

That is to say, BA is no longer prepared to fly us from Glasgow to Heathrow and Heathrow on to Palma but, as things stand, is still content to fly us home two weeks later.

Those familiar with this maddening process will be well aware that things do not stand that way for long – that, in a few days, the return flights will be cancelled, too.

Catastrophe

Part of me is disappointed in our national air carrier. As a customer longing for Spanish sunshine, I had hoped it might hold its nerve until a little nearer to our departure date before pulling the plug.

Who knows, by mid-September the quarantine restrictions for Spain may no longer be in place.

But the biggest disappointment is in government, both Westminster and Holyrood, and the apparent inability to work with airlines and other countries to avoid the catastrophe which now envelops the airline industry.

In the case of Spain, coronavirus infection rates certainly increased in isolated pockets on the mainland, but most of the country was no worse affected than ours, and in the Canary and Balearic islands – massive moneyspinners for UK airlines – the rates were significantly lower than here.

Yet the entirety of Spain and its islands remained subject to quarantine restrictions, making travel to parts of the world that were safer than ours impossible for people who were not prepared or unable to self-isolate for two weeks on their return.

The Spanish begged us to see reason. At least let people come to Mallorca, to Tenerife and Lanzarote without forcing them to quarantine, they said.

Our governmental protectors were having none of it.

And, in their inflexibility, they blight lives, destroy livelihoods as surely as the pandemic threatens health. Indeed, some might argue more surely.

How many airlines are to go under, how many airports pared to the bone or closed entirely and with the loss of how many jobs before a braver, more survivalist strategy kicks in?

Yes, of course the bottom line is health must trump economics. Sure, it is complicated to designate certain parts of a foreign country as unsafe and others as low risk when you are dealing with millions of holidaymakers, many of them young and foolhardy.

And, granted, I dare say it is a simpler message to impose the same restrictions on travel to every part of an overseas country. But the financial impact of this simplicity is devastating.

Besides, as we move deeper into this crisis, it becomes clearer that the blanket approach to controlling the virus is no longer tenable.

If a sudden spike hits Aberdeen, then that need have no bearing on life 200 miles away in Shetland or even 65 miles down the road in Dundee.

Localised lockdowns, tormenting though they may be for the communities involved, are how we protect the wider economy.

If we can get our heads round the fact that Aberdeen does not have its coronavirus troubles to seek while Shetland has seen just one new case in three months, is it really such a challenge to understand that Zaragoza in mainland Spain poses a much bigger Covid risk than Mallorca? Given that we are grown-ups and all, I would like to be trusted to grasp these pretty graspable brass tacks. Livelihoods depend on that trust – not to mention holidays.

It would be remiss, though, not to mention a third group I am disappointed in as we survey the dwindling list of options for a foreign break next month: people.

Yes, people must shoulder a share of the blame – especially some of those who habitually fly to Spanish resorts.

Distancing

Take a look around you if ever you are lucky enough to have a plane to catch from a busy airport terminal again.

Note the party atmosphere fostered by large numbers of your boisterous fellow travellers, though it may not yet be eight in the morning.

Watch them waddle, beersoaked and delighted with themselves up the aircraft aisle in their regulation stag-do duds and wonder how alive to the niceties of social distancing they might be by the time they hit the Spanish beaches and boozers.

I’m disappointed in these people because if I were a government minister trying to reach a responsible decision on foreign travel policy, theirs is the demographic of holidaymaker which would weigh most heavily on my mind.

Could a pandemic curb their enthusiasm? I would not like to say.

So let us take stock. Spain is out. Again. Ditto the driving holiday in France. Croatia, which we had looked at, joined them yesterday, then there’s Belgium, the Netherlands, the Bahamas, Malta, Andorra… the list goes on.

Where does that leave? Well, perhaps best not say.

Call it paranoia, but it is beginning to seem like no sooner is a destination proposed than someone in government hears you and slaps the place on the quarantine list.

But fly away we shall. After five uninterrupted months of my homeland I will go to considerable lengths to make it so.