If your holiday is lacking in excitement, try something really important: take a flight from continental Europe back to the UK.
Until recently, even amid years of Brexit negotiations, traveling not just across continental Europe, but between Europe and the UK was near perfect – countless flights from the basement departed from airports across the country on a daily basis, and Paris and London were just a relaxed two hour drive. train trip apart.
That reassurance has ended the COVID-19 pandemic, but it hasn’t stopped Britons from going on vacation this summer. Instead, it has added a new level of opportunity and risk to procedures, with countries quickly being added or removed from the country’s 14-day quarantine list with less than 48 hours notice, infuriating travel bookers. . . . , confuses tourists and causes problems to cross. the English channel.
This week, Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago were added to the quarantine list, giving tourists who wish to avoid self-isolation only 36 hours to return to the country before the rules take effect starting Saturday at 4 a.m. On the other hand, Portugal, a beloved tourist destination, was removed from the quarantine list, raising hopes that the holidays will fill up with people in late summer.
That change followed similar highly dramatic announcements for travelers arriving from France last week and previously from Spain, sparking the craze to return to the UK.
The rules have sparked outrage from travel reservations and travel companies, who are struggling with extreme fluctuations in reservations and cancellations. When the UK’s quarantine rules went into effect in June, they sparked huge complaints from the industry that they had asked for quarantine rules before or in the middle of the country’s two-month shutdown, when such rules didn’t exist and were enforced. they. . in June, at the time when the UK had the highest death toll in Europe, it didn’t make sense.
Since then, a cabin tracking service has sprung up, with travel experts like Charles posting regular updates on infection rates among popular vacation destinations to warn of future changes, rumors of where and when to go, and other traces. Flight prices once quarantine restrictions apply.
Some of the calls to moderate the quarantines have included requests for “regional” restrictions, including from the Croatian ambassador, who noted that cases were increasing in the capital, not tourist spots, and test services at the airport. Both have been discarded by the UK government; In the former case, Transport Minister Shapps said other countries did not have the level of detail or evidence found in the UK, making it difficult to assess their regional rates. of infection; in the case of airports, he said it was “a bit more complicated” than is often suggested and would require a second test days later.
Chaos has reigned in other ways as well. And there are other twists, according to UK Byzantine regulation on everything from seeing parents during a confinement (one at a time), to going to the pub (don’t sing, please).
This week, the Full Fact fact-checking service confirmed with the UK government that a returning traveler can come out of quarantine within two weeks to go to another country. Whether they then need to complete a quarantine when they return to the UK depends on where they went and for how long.
However, there was an outstanding question about the quarantine list: if the quarantines were actually being applied. On Friday, Transport Minister Grant Shapps told BBC Breakfast that he did not know how many people had been fined under the quarantine rules, as travelers said there were no checks to see where they came from or if they were quarantined.
