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LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - The boss of Britain's biggest
airport Heathrow said on Friday new rules requiring travellers
to England to have a pre-departure COVID-19 test should replace
the country's quarantine requirement in the next few months as
the pandemic eases.
Travel has been wiped out by COVID-19, leaving many airlines
and airports fighting for survival. Passenger numbers in Britain
have been decimated by rules requiring people arriving from most
foreign countries to quarantine for 10 days.
The government tightened the rules for travellers on Friday
when it said that people entering England would from next week
be required to present a negative COVID-19 test result to
protect against new strains of the coronavirus.
Heathrow's chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, said he
welcomed new rules to keep the country safe but said having
pre-departure testing on top of quarantine should only be a
temporary measure.
"There needs to be a plan for what's going to come next so
that we can start to get aviation back to some level of
normality while keeping people safe," he told Times Radio.
"What we'd like to see is that testing before you take off
becomes the standard as an alternative to quarantine."
He said the combination of quarantine and testing would only
be tenable for a month or two, and that a lighter regime should
be put in place as infection rates and deaths start falling and
vaccinations ramp up to help airlines and UK trade recover.
Heathrow is the UK's biggest port by value but with few
passenger flights it is struggling. The airport's passenger
numbers fell 88% in November, the last month for which data is
available.
Holland-Kaye also said vaccination programmes in Britain and
other countries gave him hope for a travel recovery this year.
"We'll see flights starting to come back and passenger
numbers building up through the summer and then into the
autumn," he told BBC radio.
(Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Kate Holton and Elizabeth
Piper)
