Irish budget airline Ryanair (FR/RYR) has rejected the UK Government’s 14-day quarantine calling it “ineffective and useless”.
The airline says that for a quarantine to be effective it needs to detain passengers upon arrival to the UK but under the UK Government’s plans the mobile numbers of arriving passengers will be taken but they will be allowed to travel onto their designated quarantine address.
As this onward travel is unrestricted it means that passengers arriving into the UK who could potentially be Coronavirus carriers can leave the airport by public transport such as the Heathrow & Gatwick Express trains, Bus & Coach networks and taxis.
Ryanair says that is nothing to stop people arriving into the UK to spread COVID-19 across London and any other UK city with an airport.
A spokesperson for Ryanair said:
“This 14 day UK quarantine is ineffective, completely useless, and will have no effect on British passengers who will largely ignore it. At a time when the medical science across Europe, in countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, have safely removed all inbound visitor restrictions, the imposition of this completely defective quarantine in the UK is utterly useless and a total waste of time.
Ryanair is going back flying on 1 July with 1,000 daily flights from most UK airports, and we look forward to welcoming thousands of UK visitors going on their well-earned summer holidays to Portugal, Spain, France and Italy, and we are equally confident that inbound visitors to the UK will not be deterred by this completely ineffective and useless quarantine measure, which both Priti Patel and Grant Shapps know cannot be implemented, cannot be policed and has no scientific basis supporting it whatsoever.”
By taking the phone numbers of passengers the Government hopes to “check-up” on them to ensure they are quarantined at their address but obviously on a mobile phone it can be answered from anywhere.
Ryanair also says that the Government will only call 1% of the them.
The 14-Day quarantine rule is due to come into force on the 8th June.
