Thousands pay up to rush home and beat quarantine as cut-off imposed
Tens of thousands of British tourists in France faced charges of hundreds of pounds as they sought to rush home before quarantine restrictions were imposed.
Air fares were more than six times higher than normal for flights from Paris to London yesterday, with the cheapest British Airways tickets £452.
The same journey last Saturday could be made with the airline for just £66.
The cheapest ticket on a Eurostar train from Paris to London was £210. Eurotunnel Le Shuttle, the train service that carries vehicles through the Channel Tunnel, was fully booked.
A spokesman said 12,000 people had tried to book tickets in the hour after the rules were announced at 10pm on Thursday, compared with just hundreds normally.
The demand for last-minute travel came after it was announced that people arriving in the UK from France after 4am today would be required to spend 14 days in self-isolation due to rising numbers of coronavirus cases across the Channel.
The conditions will also apply to travellers returning from the Netherlands, Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos and Aruba.
Holidaymakers Stuart and Anna Buntine spent nearly £1,000 to make it home via Eurostar from Burgundy. Mr Buntine, 58, said: “I went to bed last night thinking it was all OK, woke up at 7am to find we had to get back here pretty sharpish.
“We couldn’t get tickets, all the sites had crashed ... we had to buy business-class tickets back today, so it’s cost nearly £1,000.”
Dyan Crowther, chief executive of the HS1 high-speed London to Channel Tunnel rail link, said it was “heartbreaking” seeing families having to cancel holiday plans and spend hundreds of pounds dashing home to beat quarantine.
A spokeswoman for travel trade organisation Abta said the Government’s quarantine policy will “result in livelihoods being lost unless it can step in with tailored support for the travel industry”.
British Airways said the airline had not increased its ticket prices.
The company is allowing customers to bring forward their return trips at no extra cost and using larger aircraft on affected routes.
In a statement on the six new countries removed from the travel exemptions list, BA said: “We are currently operating a limited schedule to these countries. As always, if a customer’s flight is cancelled they are entitled to a voucher or a full refund.”
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps insisted the UK Government had taken “a practical approach” to the restrictions.
He said an estimated 160,000 holidaymakers were expected to try to return to the UK from France yesterday.
There “had to be a cut-off ”, he told BBC Breakfast.
“It’s a practical approach as well, which has enabled all fours parts of the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England – to implement the same time at 4am where there are no flights in the air,” he said. Mr Shapps added: “You can always argue one way or the other.
“We have to make a decision on it and we have to do that based on science and medicine, and that’s what we’ve done.”
The move comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to be “absolutely ruthless” in decisions about imposing quarantine restrictions.
The latest 14-day cumulative figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control showed 32.1 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people in France, compared with 18.5 in the UK.
France’s secretary of state for European affairs said the UK’S decision would lead to “reciprocal measures” across the Channel.