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Portugal’s three brief weeks in the sun, from the perspective of British holidaymakers, ended at 3am when the final evacuation flight touched down at Doncaster Sheffield airport. The passengers on the delayed Wizz Air Airbus from Faro avoided quarantine by just an hour.
The chaotic rush home for tens of thousands of British holidaymakers was triggered by the transport secretary, Grant Shapps.
On Thursday 3 June he announced Portugal would move from the quarantine-free “green list” to the “amber list” – requiring 10 days of self-isolation – at 4am on Tuesday.
Sixty flights departed from Portugal to the UK on Monday carrying an estimated 10,000 passengers. Many of them had cut their holidays short because of the sudden change of travel advice.
British Airways sent out the biggest plane in its current fleet, the 777, to scoop up stragglers from Faro airport. Tickets for one-way seats to Heathrow were typically selling for £350.
While BA and TUI allowed holidaymakers to transfer to earlier flights for free, other companies charged hundreds of pounds more for switching to earlier departures.
Passengers on easyJet from Faro to Bristol arrived after midnight following a five-hour delay, but still before the deadline.
The corresponding departure on Tuesday has been cancelled, along with a number of other easyJet flights. Demand has collapsed, with Ryanair selling flights from Faro to the UK on Tuesday for as little as €10 (£8.60).
The transport secretary’s previous assurance that airlines and holiday companies could expect at least a week’s warning of such a change was disregarded.
In April Mr Shapps had said: “To give passengers more certainty when travelling, a ‘green watchlist’ will be introduced to help identify countries most at risk of moving from ‘green’ to ‘amber’.”
But announcing the short-notice change in Portugal’s status, he said: “The public has always known travel will be different this year and we must continue to take a cautious approach to reopening international travel in a way that protects public health and the vaccine rollout.”
Portugal was the only mainstream destination on the original green list, which took effect on 17 May.
The Labour Party is calling for Portugal and every other amber list country to be placed on the “red list,” requiring 11 nights of hotel quarantine at a price for a single traveller of £1,750.
Seven more countries have been moved from the amber to the red list: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Egypt, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Trinidad & Tobago.
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