Ryanair boss: Britons know quarantine rules are rubbish

Ryanair boss: Britons know quarantine rules are rubbish

Michael O’Leary says he will not cancel flights as airlines start legal action over rules

Mark Sweney

@marksweney  Email

Mon 8 Jun 2020 09.53 BSTLast modified on Mon 8 Jun 2020 10.28 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/08/ryanair-boss-michael-oleary-britons-quarantine-rules-rubbish?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0LYfquAf2rV27taDLkhojjdsEuJXaNi7avKUF408s4FFNkx-nW-1YSlv8#Echobox=1591607184

The Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has said he will not cancel flights despite the government’s new quarantine rules for travellers arriving in the UK, because “British people are ignoring this quarantine. They know it’s rubbish”.

O’Leary’s comments come after Ryanair, easyJet and IAG, the owner of British Airways, started legal action against the government in an attempt to overturn new rules requiring all passengers arriving in the UK to self-isolate for 14 days, which came into effect on Monday.

Breaking the rules, which are designed to help prevent a second wave of the coronavirus, is punishable with a £1,000 fine. The policy is to be reviewed every three weeks and the idea of “air bridges” to popular destinations for holidaymakers such as Portugal has been discussed.

However, O’Leary said thousands of Britons were still booking holidays with Ryanair, which intends to operate almost 1,000 flights a day from 1 July. He added that he had no intention of cancelling flights in the peak months of July and August if the rules were still in place then.

“No [we won’t cancel], because the flights are full outbound of the UK,” he said. “British people are ignoring this quarantine. They know it’s rubbish. Ryanair is operating a thousand daily flights to points all over Portugal, Spain, Italy [and] Greece from the 1st of July, the 2nd, the 3rd and every day after that.”

O’Leary said he expected British tourists would still book holidays in Europe but European travellers would be put off travelling to Britain.

The airlines argue that the rules have come into force much too late to stop the transmission of Covid-19 and will kill off any nascent recovery in their industries.

John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow airport, has warned that “millions” of jobs could be lost if the government does not come up with a plan to allow restriction-free travel.

“We cannot go on like this as a country,” he told Sky News. “We need to start planning to reopen our borders. If we don’t get aviation moving again quickly, in a very safe way, then we are going to lose hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs in the UK just at the time when we need to be rebuilding our economy.”