Planes still landing in UK from world’s coronavirus hotspots despite lockdown

Flights are continuing to arrive in Britain from some of the worst-hit countries of the coronavirus epidemic despite a nationwide lockdown restricting travel inside the country.

More than 20 planes a day are touching down from the US, which has become the new epicentre of the pandemic with 143,380 confirmed cases of the disease. Passengers are not made to go into quarantine and are simply asked to follow self-isolation guidelines after their arrival.

While many airlines have cancelled the majority of their flights, a number have still been coming in from Madrid and Rome, the capitals of Europe’s most affected countries. Earlier this month the EU agreed to ban nearly all flights from outside the area for 30 days but the UK did not have to follow this now it has officially left the bloc.

Senior ministers appear to be split over what to do. Home Secretary Priti Patel is reportedly in favour of banning routes from disease-hit countries while Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab don’t want to stop citizens from coming home by sealing off Britain’s borders, according to the Times.

Some airlines including British Airways and Ryanair have cancelled a number of routes, mainly due to a sharp drop in demand triggered by social distancing advice and a number of countries imposing travel bans.

On Thursday 21 planes landed at London Heathrow from America, including five from New York state where the official death toll has now passed 1,000.

Four were scheduled to arrive from Rome on Saturday and two came in yesterday from Madrid and Barcelona.

South Korea is one of many countries forcing new arrivals to go into quarantine for 14 days before they are free to go.

Passengers travelling to China shortly before most airlines stopped flying there, said they had their temperatures taken throughout the journey, were taken to a screening room upon arrival and were made to spend 14 days in quarantine in a hotel.

This morning it was announced that EasyJet would ground its entire fleet of 344 planes to cut costs as the aviation industry is thrown into turmoil by the outbreak.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: ‘There is no evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans would have any effect on the spread of infection.’

A spokesperson for Virgin Atlantic told Metro.co.uk: ‘As part of measures put in place to minimise the business impact of COVID-19, we are making changes to our flying programme in order to deploy our fleet most effectively and provide the services that our customers want to fly.

‘As a result, we are operating a skeleton flying programme to New York (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX) and Hong Kong (HKG), as well as some cargo only charter flights.

‘We continue to monitor the Covid-19 situation very carefully, including the latest guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), as well as any new entry or quarantine restrictions implemented by the countries we fly to.’

A British Airways spokesperson said: ‘We are doing everything we can to bring customers home, including critical workers.

‘Not all governments are allowing flights. We are working with the Foreign Office to open routes where we can.’

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