Senior travel industry figures have criticised the government for the bungled roll-out of the hotel quarantine programme.
From Monday 15 February, arrivals from 33 “red list” countries – regarded as presenting a high risk of new variants of coronavirus – will be required to go into an 11-night hotel quarantine.
A third London airport, City, has only 10 international flights a week – of which only two are from a key European hub, Frankfurt.
The fourth commercial airport is Birmingham airport. The airport predicts that, if last week’s experience is repeated, 1,070 passengers will arrive on nine scheduled flights from five airports – two of which are international hubs, Paris CDG and Istanbul. The remainder are Romanian cities.