Flight hostess wearing PPE gives directions to passengers the first day of reopening of Milan … [+]
In the coming days, the European Union is going to launch a website and smartphone app to tell its citizens where they can and cannot travel this summer.
The interactive portal has been made necessary by the uncoordinated reopening of Europe’s internal borders. Countries are allowing entry from some nations but not others, and a confusing labyrinth of quarantine rules has been set across the continent.
On 15 June several countries including Belgium and France will reopen their borders. But while Belgium’s borders will be open to all people coming from within the EU and U.K., France will have a two week quarantine for people coming from Britain. That’s because the U.K. is starting a two-week quarantine for French people and all others entering the country, starting on 8 June – at the same time that the rest of Europe is ending their border closures and quarantines. The U.K. now has more daily Coronavirus deaths than all 27 EU countries combined.
The external borders of the European Union remained closed to anyone who is not an EU citizen – though the British have an exception because of the Brexit transition period, during which they are still subject to EU law until the end of this year.
Belgians can once again leave the country, but not all EU countries will accept them. Greece and Malta, for instance, both have Belgium on their travel blacklists.
Most countries in Europe will not be allowing visitors from the U.K. and Sweden because of their drastically higher number of Coronavirus cases due to delayed lockdown measures. But some will, including Spain and Italy.
So, how is someone supposed to know where they can travel to this summer?
Fake Flights
The situation is rapidly evolving, which will make it difficult to book travel far in advance. Even if the borders between two European countries are open right now, that doesn’t mean they will still be open in August. Nobody knows whether a second wave will cause the reimposition of border closures.
To make matters worse, airlines appear to be deliberately selling tickets for future flights they have no intention of operating. An investigation by travel website Skift found that some airlines are selling tickets to flights they have already told their shareholders won’t be running. They then inform the customers a few days later their flight will not run and refusing to issue cash refunds, locking them into vouchers (even though this is against EU law). This is likely being done as a way to help the airlines’ liquidity crisis, as many face bankruptcy from lack of cash on hand.
All of this makes booking a holiday this summer a bit of a gamble. But the European Union, and national governments, are urging people to travel again in order to rescue Europe’s all-important tourism industry, which represents 10% of its economic output.
Airlines are also desperate for people to return to flying, and are offering cut-rate deals in the short term to entice them to do so. Budget airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet have been bombarding customers with emails on summer sales. These offers can be tempting because air fares are expected to go way up in the medium to longer term, starting in the Autumn.
Travel nightmare
People in the U.K. should keep in mind that while countries in continental Europe may be encouraging people to travel, the British government’s official advice is still that people should avoid “all but essential international travel”. The government has not given any indication of when this might be lifted. Disregarding this advice and making up an “essential” reason to travel would invalidate a person’s travel insurance. That means if you were to fall ill or have an accident, you would be liable for thousands of pounds in medical and other costs.
Flying is likely to be a very unpleasant experience as well. The EU’s tourism reopening strategy, adopted last month, lays out precautions that would seriously burden travellers. Airports will have social distancing requirements and possible temperature checks which could mean people have to arrive for their flights several hours in advance. European Union Aviation Safety Agency guidelines mean measures will be put in place that airports had previously said would be impossible to implement.
The EU is not advising governments to require social distancing on planes – because the airlines say they can’t operate under these conditions – which will mean unavoidable close proximity to many strangers for a prolonged period of time. All airlines are expected to require passengers to wear masks for the duration of the flight, but some experts say this will not eliminate the risk of transmission and could actually give a false sense of security.
Those tempted to travel by train instead are in for some bad news. International train travel has almost completely stopped since the crisis started and will only slowly come back online over the summer. The rail industry says that because the social distancing requirements put on trains are much more stringent than that for planes (some say because the airline lobby is so much more powerful than the train lobby) rail operators are likely to operate at drastically reduced schedules and may cut routes. The new requirements, they say, would make running some train routes economically unviable. International rail tickets, already much higher than flying before the crisis, are expected to be even higher than normal when trains start running again.
All of these factors will make international travel this summer unpredictable, cumbersome, and possibly deadly because of the health risk. Even if governments and airlines beg people to travel again, many will probably opt to sit this summer out.
