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* UK brings in 14-day quarantine for France, Netherlands,
Malta
* Airline and travel company shares fall
* France warns it will reciprocate
(Adds private flight demand, latest cases)
By Alistair Smout and Tangi Salaün
LONDON/CALAIS, France, Aug 14 (Reuters) - British travellers
rushed home from summer holidays in France on Friday, booking
planes, trains, boats and even private jets to get home before a
14-day quarantine comes into force in response to rising
coronavirus infections there.
The government announced late on Thursday that it would
impose a quarantine from 0300 GMT on Saturday on arrivals from
France, giving an estimated 160,000 UK holidaymakers there just
over 24 hours to get home or face self-isolation on return.
The sudden rule change dealt a fresh blow to tourists,
airlines and tour operators. The pandemic has left many travel
groups cash-strapped and fighting for survival.
Many British tourists headed towards the French port of
Calais hoping to catch a ferry or a shuttle train home in time.
"We've changed our plans when we heard the news last night.
We decided to head back home a day early to miss the
quarantine," one British woman at a service station on the
motorway to Calais said after her week in southern France.
Queues of cars built up in Calais through Friday afternoon.
Ferry companies were adding extra crossings to help more people
get home, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, head of the Port of Calais,
told Reuters.
PrivateFly, a British-based jet provider, said it had seen
three times the normal number of enquiries and bookings.
The new quarantine rules apply to France, the second-most
popular holiday destination for Britons, as well as to the
Netherlands and the Mediterranean island of Malta.
Spain, Britons' favourite holiday destination, came under
British government quarantine rules on July 26.
"We've also had a number of enquiries from clients booked to
travel to these destinations in the coming weeks to change their
travel plans in order to avoid quarantine zones," PrivateFly CEO
Adam Twidell said.
France warned it would reciprocate, dealing a further blow
to airlines' hopes of an August recovery given they may have to
cancel yet more flights.
Airline and travel shares tumbled. British Airways-owner IAG
was down 6% and easyJet, which said it would
operate its full schedule for the coming days, fell 7%.
TIGHTENING QUARANTINE
When Europe first went into lockdown in March, Britain was
criticised for not restricting arrivals from abroad. But since
June, it has introduced strict quarantine rules for arrivals
from countries with infection rates above a certain level.
This contrasts with an easing of rules at home, where Prime
Minister Boris Johnson has ordered the gradual reopening of the
economy to resume, weeks after pausing it.
Transport minister Grant Shapps said the government needed
to balance the need to open the economy and to contain the
virus. The UK recorded 1,441 COVID-19 cases, the highest daily
tally since June 14, official data showed on Friday.
Shapps told BBC Radio he sympathised with travellers but
that they should not be entirely surprised, given the fluid
situation around the pandemic.
"Where we see countries breach a certain level of cases ...
then we have no real choice but to act," he told Sky News.
Airlines UK, an industry body representing BA, easyJet and
Ryanair, called on Britain to implement more targeted
quarantines on the regions with the highest infection rates and
to bring in a testing regime.
An EU study showed that imported cases of COVID typically
only account for a small share of infections when a pandemic is
at its peak, but are more significant once a country has the
disease under control.
(Writing by Sarah Young
Additional reporting by Kate Holton; David Milliken and Richard
Lough
Editing by Nick Macfie, Hugh Lawson and Frances Kerry)
