Manchester Airports Group (MAG) is calling for a clear path to restriction-free travel to ensure the full revival of the UK’s ailing aviation sector.

The UK’s largest airport group MAG, which owns and operates Manchester, as well as London Stansted and East Midlands Airport, has revealed figures showing passenger numbers were down 90% across the first 12 months of the coronavirus pandemic.

In March 2019, MAG served more than four million passengers, compared to 140,000 in March 2021  – a -97% decrease. Manchester Airport handled just 95,798 passengers in March 2021, 89.8% down on the 942,000 it handled 12 months earlier. At Stansted the figure was 44,259 this March, compared with more than 800,000 a year earlier and at East Midlands Airport, the airport served just 71 passengers for the whole of March this year, against 106,529 in 2020.

In March 20119, MAG’s 12-month rolling passenger numbers stood at nearly 62 million, compared to just over six million in March 2021 – down a total of 90%.

The group underlines that a roadmap should be based on greater cooperation between the UK Government and its overseas counterparts, to share information about the emergence of new COVID-19 variants of concern and eliminate the need for travellers to take expensive PCR tests on their return.

Currently, the UK Government proposes that all passengers – even those returning from low risk countries on the ‘green list’ – will have to take a PCR test, so it can gather data that will help with genomic sequencing. This could be avoided, says MAG, if governments collaborate on sequencing and sharing data variants.

The testing requirement is part of the Global Travel Taskforce’s ‘traffic light’ framework, announced last week, which categorises countries  as red, amber or green based on the risk associated with visiting them. Subject to final confirmation, it is set to come into play on 17 May, the earliest date non-essential travel can resume. According to MAG, this framework should be improved to include a fourth, restriction-free category capitalising on the success of the UK’s world-leading vaccination programme.

“The UK Government is among the first to have set out proposals for a system that enables international travel to resume and should be applauded for taking the lead,” said Charlie Cornish, CEO, MAG.

“After more than a year of almost total shutdown – and with so  many jobs and so much economic value at stake – it’s really important we get people moving again once it is safe to do so. We now need Government to confirm the 17 May start date as soon as possible, along with the list of countries that fall into each ‘traffic light’ category.”

Under the UK’s traffic light system, travellers returning from green list countries will have to take a pre-departure test and another PCR test within two days of getting back. Meanwhile those returning from amber list countries are also required to self-isolate for 10 days and take an extra PCR test, while for those returning from red list countries a mandatory government-approved hotel quarantine package will be imposed.

Cornish added that the price tag for testing will hold back the UK’s recovery and its ability to power the UK’s economic revival as a whole. “The requirement to complete a PCR test on return from even the safest countries adds potentially unnecessary cost and the Government’s attention must now turn to finding smarter and more affordable ways to manage the risk posed by new variants of concern.”

He added that this should be achieved by “forging ever-closer partnerships with key markets and developing transparent ways of sharing data into these variants so they can be effectively contained.

“Where we can trust data from other countries, forcing people to spend money on expensive PCR tests, to obtain the very same information, would represent a colossal waste of everyone’s money. COVID-19 is a global problem and requires a coordinated international response, not just in bringing the pandemic under control, but in developing solutions to enable a return to restriction-free travel between countries where there is a lower level of risk.”

He also alluded to the fact that the Government should also be looking to the UK’s world-leading vaccination programme as a route to removing further barriers to travel.

“Only by setting ourselves on a course back to restriction-free travel now will the aviation industry find itself on a road to full recovery, unlocking the wider-ranging economic benefits that brings,” he concluded.

 

 

 

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