London Heathrow airport boss John Holland-Kaye failed to mention the UAE on a potential ‘green list’ of destinations being announced next month as the UK opens its borders.
As Heathrow announced losses of £329 million in Q1 2021 – taking its total Covid losses to nearly £2.4 billion – Holland-Kaye said locations likely to feature on the Britain’s green list include the US, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Iceland, plus some Caribbean destinations.
“Heathrow has been in constant communication with the government over the impact of the pandemic as well as plans for a resumption in travel,” he told Bloomberg on Thursday.
The UK will confirm by early May if international travel can resume on May 17, and which countries will fall into each category, a Department for Transport spokesman told Arabian Business in a email.
“Our decisions on categorising countries are informed by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which produces risk assessments of the spread of variants of concern internationally,” the spokesperson added.
Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths (pictured below) told a Dubai-based radio station on Thursday that the airport is in “talks” to put Dubai back on the UK’s travel green list.
“We have made very strong representation to the British government about the credibility of the numbers here and the way we are handling everything,” Griffiths said during the interview. “There are countries on the green list that, we believe, haven’t taken the kind of care and number of measures like we have in Dubai to keep everyone safe.”
The CEO said Dubai Airports could “apply rigorous testing and hygiene measures that we have put in place, which are far better than a lot of other places in the world”.
With London being such a large source market for DXB, Griffiths said he “wants to resolve this very quickly”.
“It’s almost unthinkable not having a solid air bridge of flights [28 daily services] between the UAE and the UK. It’s ironic that we can fly to Scotland, but not to England.”
DXB reported passenger traffic of 5.75 million in Q1 2021, a 67.8 percent slump from the same period in 2020 that predated the bulk of Covid-related international travel restrictions.
Only 1.7 million passengers travelled through Heathrow airport in Q1 2021, down 91 percent compared to Q1 2019. Cargo volumes are also down 23 percent on 2019, underlining how a lack of flights impacts UK trade with the rest of the world.
“These results show how Covid has devastated the aviation sector and British trade,” Holland-Kaye said. “Restarting international travel from May 17 will help to kickstart the economic recovery, allowing exporters to get their goods to market. Heathrow is gearing up for the recovery.”
“While underlying demand for travel remains strong, continuing uncertainty over government policy means we have reduced our passenger forecast for the year to a range between 13 and 36 million, compared to 81 million in 2019,” Heathrow said in a statement.
“As vaccinations are rolled-out and Covid levels fall, restarting travel to markets like the US will be critical to the UK’s economic recovery and we will be prepared to scale-up our operations as demand returns,” it added.
Saj Ahmad (pictured above), chief analyst at UK-based StrategicAero Research, said it is “highly likely” that the UK government will re-examine the UAE being on the red list in the next few months.“While it’s clear there is a financial downside to Dubai not being connected to England – particularly with Emirates not being able to offer as many flights and capture high-yield traffic, negotiations – a dual successful vaccine rollout in the UK and UAE may well see the Emirates being a permitted travel destination by the summer,” he said.
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