The cost of flying to Portugal has plunged over the weekend with Ryanair putting on dozens of flights to Faro, Lisbon and Porto shortly after the country was cleared three days ago for quarantine-free trips from May 17.
Britons travelling from London to Lisbon next Monday before coming home a week later can get a return with Ryanair from Stansted for just £67 – with various different flights available with the airline for similar prices.
This is 76 per cent down on the cheapest return moments before the ‘green list’ announcement at 5pm last Friday, which was £282 with TAP Portugal from Heathrow – with that same flight at roughly the same price today.
Those hoping to travel to Faro for a week from next Monday can do so from Stansted for £63 with Ryanair, while the Irish budget airline is also offering returns to Porto for £66 in a bid to lure back passengers.
Ryanair is laying on 175,000 more seats to Portugal from next Monday, leaving from London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds. There will be 38 more flights a week from Stansted and 19 more from Manchester.
Tour guides wait for customers at Comercio square in Lisbon last July, with Portugal now set for an influx of UK holidaymakers
Ryanair is laying on 175,000 more seats to Portugal from May 17, leaving from London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds
TAP Portugal planes are seen at Lisbon Airport shortly after the first coronavirus lockdown began in April last year
However tourists hoping to visit other countries on the ‘green list’ such as Israel and Gibraltar will find the lowest prices have gone up over the past few days, with Ryanair not entering the market on these routes.
Wizz Air are offering a return from Luton to Gibraltar, leaving next Monday and coming back a week later, for £138 today, which has gone up 82 per cent from £76 which was the price when checked last Friday at 4pm.
And a return flight from Heathrow to Tel Aviv with British Airways leaving next Monday and returning a week later is now £313, rising 24 per cent from £252 when checked just before the Government’s announcement last Friday.
It comes after flight comparison website Skyscanner reported a 660 per cent increase in bookings for flights from Britain to Portugal last Friday compared to the previous day.
Hugh Aitken, vice president of flights at Skyscanner, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: ‘On Friday we saw over 119 per cent increase in bookings day on day just as travellers started to respond to the green light to start international travel.
‘Portugal itself saw a well over a 660 per cent increase in bookings out of UK day on day. Very positive and a good start. The key thing is we’re certainly seeing the demand out there.
‘In general we’re seeing prices less than they were pre-pandemic. In a report we published a couple of weeks ago we said the average of prices globally are 13 per cent lower than they were before the pandemic.’
Also this morning, Zina Bencheikh, managing director in Europe for Intrepid Travel, which operates small group tours around the world, told BBC Radio 4: ‘We’ve seen since the start of the pandemic that people are looking forward to their next holiday – they’re being very realistic about when they can travel.
‘However, since last week’s announcement, we’ve had interest in Iceland, Portugal and Israel over the weekend that has been quite enormous. We know there is a pent-up demand, we know that travellers want to travel, it’s just about when they will be able to do so.
‘From our perspective, prices have not gone up at all – it’s actually the opposite that has happened, and we’ve seen around the travel industry has been quite reasonable in terms of not increasing the prices.’
She added: ‘I do think that travellers need to book their holidays in advance because there are so many flexible possibilities.
A return from Heathrow to Tel Aviv (pictured) with British Airways leaving next Monday and returning a week later is now £313
Wizz Air are offering a return from Luton to Gibraltar (pictured), leaving next Monday and coming back a week later, for £138
‘They can change last-minute, they can request for a refund as well dependent on which company they book their trip with, and I think that flexibility will give peace of mind for not worrying about prices increasing in the near future.’
It comes as the backlash over the foreign holidays roadmap intensified last night as figures showed the grounding of planes has blown a £3billion hole in Treasury coffers.
The collapse in air passenger duty revenues sparked calls to speed up the reopening of foreign travel after just 12 destinations were cleared for quarantine-free trips from May 17.
Many of the destinations are remote or have very strict entry measures or blanket bans on UK tourists.
Tourism chiefs are also furious at ministers advising travellers not to visit countries ranked ‘amber’, such as Spain, Italy, France and Greece.
It means visitors are likely to struggle to get travel insurance, effectively putting the destinations out of bounds.
There is hope that more European hotspots will make the green list by the end of June once three-weekly reviews get under way. The first will be on June 7.
It came as new figures showed the Treasury received just £582million in APD between April 2020 and 2021, compared with around £3.6billion annually before the pandemic.
The wider economy has taken a further hit of billions of pounds due to the shutdown of international travel.
Gloria Guevara, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council, said: ‘After suffering the biggest fall in contribution towards GDP from travel and tourism of the ten most important global markets – by a staggering 62.5 per cent – the UK can ill-afford to be this cautious.’
Karen Dee, chief executive of the Airport Operators Association, added: ‘The figures show just how near-complete the collapse in air traffic has been as a result of the pandemic.
‘It is disappointing that the number of nations on the green list remains extremely limited and that vaccinated people are subject to restrictions when travelling to low-risk nations. This is not the meaningful restart aviation and the UK economy need right now.’
Tory MP Henry Smith, chairman of the parliamentary all-party Future of Aviation group, said: ‘The limited green list risks holding back the restart of our aviation industry and the full restart of a truly Global Britain.
‘We need to re-open to more nations as soon as possible to allow much needed summer holidays, to restart leisure travel and to reunite families.’
The countries on the ‘green list’ from May 17 are: Portugal including the Azores and Madeira; Australia; New Zealand; Singapore; Brunei; Iceland; the Faroe Islands; Gibraltar; the Falkland Islands; and Israel
British second home owners with properties in Spain, France and Italy may choose to fly into Portugal and drive to them when flights open up on May 17, experts have predicted
Charlie Cornish, chief executive of Manchester and Stansted airports, said: ‘Aviation supports more than 1 million jobs and generates billions of pounds of economic value but is being held back by much tighter controls than any other industry.
‘It is essential that we see meaningful progress towards restarting international travel at the first review of the green list in the next few weeks, ahead of the peak summer season.’
Unveiling the roadmap last Friday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said it was ‘necessarily cautious’ due to the risk of so-called variants of concern entering Britain.
It came as a fresh row broke out between Border Force, Heathrow Airport and unions over the length of queues faced by holidaymakers at the border this summer.
Passengers have waited up to seven hours in recent weeks despite arrivals being a fraction of what they were pre-pandemic.
A union official claimed this was partly because only half of passport control booths can be manned due to a lack of perspex screens installed.
Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Services Union, said it meant guards would be breaking social distancing rules if they manned every booth.
She said: ‘The problem isn’t the number of staff. It’s that we haven’t got wrap-around perspex screens around the desks.
‘So we can only fill every other desk because the officers would be shoulder to shoulder with each other.
‘They put screens in front, so there’s a front-facing piece of perspex, but they haven’t continued that around the side. If we got in more perspex screens that would double our capacity overnight.’
But a Heathrow source rubbished the claims, saying: ‘The Perspex screen issue hasn’t been formally raised with us and is not something we are aware is an issue.’
On Friday, Border Force chief Paul Lincoln attributed longer queues to officers needing to check more paperwork, such as negative Covid certificates, with every passenger being checked manually.
This was taking up to ten minutes per passenger, he said, or up to 15 times longer than pre-pandemic. However, he pledged that more guards would be deployed to man desks for the summer.
Electronic passport gates will also be synced with passenger locator forms, which each traveller must fill out pre-departure into the UK, meaning they can be re-opened and queue times slashed.
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said: ‘We cannot have a situation where we are opening up travel and getting the economy moving again and the whole thing grinds to a halt because of incompetent management at the border.
‘People simply won’t travel if they see chaos at airports on their TV screens.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘To protect public health, queues and wait times are expected to be longer as it is vital that thorough checks are undertaken at the border to prevent the importation of new Covid-19 cases into the UK.
‘Border Force officers are making use of all desks and perspex screens are in use so that the maximum number of officers can carry out checks. It is inaccurate to claim otherwise.’
At present, APD is charged in two bands. Passengers on flights to countries less than 2,000 miles away pay £13 in economy or £26 in business class.
For flights more than 2,000 miles they pay £82 and £180 respectively.
Air passenger numbers have fallen by around 84 per cent over the last year.