Heathrow urges for further reopening of travel

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

According to reports, Heathrow has welcomed just 536,000 passengers in April, down 92 per cent from the pre-pandemic figure of 6.2 million recorded in the same month of 2019. In response, the airport called on the government to add more countries to the ‘green’ list of safe travel destinations.

Officials have outlined plans to revaluate the safe list every three weeks. Heathrow Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye said in a statement that the green list is very welcome, but they need to expand it massively in the next few weeks to include other low risk markets such as the United States, and remove the need for fully vaccinated passengers to take two expensive PCR tests.

Holland-Kaye argued that the government should also help people plan ahead by publishing a list of countries expected to be on the green list for the summer holidays. He mentioned that this could mean that passengers are not faced with high prices for last minute bookings.  At the same time, he urged authorities to increase the resources available at immigration as travel resumes.

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