A consortium of airlines and airline industry players has written to senior government figures in both the UK and USA calling for an expedited travel corridor. With vaccination rollouts well underway in both countries, airlines want to ease travel restrictions on the normally busy transatlantic travel corridor.
“Air travel is a critical enabler of trade between our countries that was worth US$273 billion or £196 billion in 2019,” said the letter to US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and UK Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps.
Airlines join forces to call for travel corridor reopening
Signatories to the May 11 letter were key airlines on both sides of the Atlantic, including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, and industry group Airlines for America.
“Public health must guide the reopening of international air travel, and we are confident that the aviation industry possesses the right tools, based on data and science, to enable a safe and meaningful restart to transatlantic travel,” the letter said.
In a rare joining of forces between airlines that are normally arch-rivals, the CEOs who signed the letter proposed a summit to explore how to safely and swiftly re-open the critical travel corridor.
The transatlantic travel corridor matters more to UK airlines
Arguably, the transatlantic corridor matters more to UK carriers than US carriers. In 2019, more than 23% of passengers moving through London Heathrow Airport were coming on or off transatlantic flights. The number one route was the London Heathrow – New York JFK run.
But it isn’t all about New York. In 2019, British Airways operated approximately 30 routes into the USA. Most…