Aberdeen International Airport is standing with travel and tourism colleagues and signalling for help as a Day of Action takes place today (June 23).
Employees and businesses from across the aviation and travel industries – airlines, airports, tour operators, travel agents, suppliers and partners – are coming together to raise awareness of the challenges facing the travel industry, and to ask the UK/Scottish Government reinstate a risk-managed approach around a safe return to international travel in time for the peak summer period and to think again about financial support offered to the sector.
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The travel industry is asking the UK/Scottish Government:
• To allow international travel to return safely and in a risk-managed way by properly implementing the Global Travel Taskforce’s plan for a traffic-light system, by expanding the ‘Green List’ in line with the evidence and making restrictions more proportionate, whilst keeping a strong red list to guard against variants.
• Bring forward a package of tailored financial support, including extension of furlough support, recognising that the travel sector’s ability to trade and generate income is much slower than first anticipated and more gradual than for businesses in the domestic economy.
To back colleagues across the aviation, travel and tourism industry, Aberdeen International Airport has released images calling for help from the Scottish/UK Government.
These pictures from across the airport campus use the semaphore signalling system to spell out HELP.
Aberdeen International Airport had just over a million passengers in 2020 compared to 2.9m passengers in 2019. So far up to May 2021, the north-easts major transport hub has had 290,000 passengers.
Mark Beveridge, Operations Director at Aberdeen International Airport, said: “As summer begins the UK’s travel and tourism sectors face a critical moment. Before the pandemic hit, our industry was a cornerstone of the UK economy.
“Our airport remained open and operational to support reduced schedules that consist of lifeline routes to the Highland and Islands, air ambulance flights and vital hub connectivity for key workers in the energy sector.
“Today, as the wider domestic economy reopens, and edges closer to normality, the UK travel and tourism sectors remain essentially closed, mired in uncertainty and deeply concerned for our future.
“The Traffic Light System launched by Government has failed to deliver a meaningful restart to international travel as promised. Rather than promote safe travel where possible, the Government instead seems determined to stop people travelling and is ignoring the very risk-based system they established.
“Backing the travel industry now will help to position us to ensure we can act as a driving force in the long-term economic recovery of the UK.”
As part of the Day of Action there are a range of events and activities happening across the UK including 800 people attending an organised lobby outside Parliament in London, 200 people at an event in Holyrood in Edinburgh and 100 will gather in Belfast.
The industry bodies behind today’s Day of Action – including the Airport Operators Association, ABTA, Airlines UK, trade unions , and UKinbound – also say the UK Government’s support through the crisis has been woeful.
While other sectors have received tailored support, such as grant schemes, the story is quite different for travel, with many businesses excluded from the general grant support available and others only able to access the bare minimum. In contrast, countries like the US, France and Germany have given substantial grant-based financial support to, for example, airports.
Airport Operators Association Chief Executive Karen Dee said: “The Government’s overly cautious approach to reopening travel has real-world consequences for the 1.6m jobs in the UK aviation and tourism industries that rely on aviation having a meaningful restart.
“Unless the Government makes a meaningful restart of aviation possible by extending the green list at the next review, moving to rapid and affordable tests for returning travellers and following the examples of the EU and the US by reducing restrictions on fully vaccinated passengers, aviation and travel are in for an extremely difficult summer.
“If the Government decides it cannot reopen travel more meaningfully, then they should stand ready to give substantial financial compensation to airports and others in aviation and tourism.
“Jobs and livelihoods in businesses across the economy that need air connectivity for their success are at risk. The Government cannot afford to let those go.”
