Aviation experts express doubts over UAE removal from the UK’s travel ‘red list’

They also accused the British Government of treating the ongoing issue as a “political ball game”.

The UAE was added to the country’s ‘red list’ in January and has remained despite the UK this week opening its borders to 15 nations, including Israel, Portugal, Iceland, Australia and Singapore.

British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said last month the concerns surrounding the UAE was because it is a major transport hub.

However, John Grant, partner at UK-based consultancy Midas Aviation, an outspoken critic of the move, told Arabian Business that despite the complex nature of dealing with transit passengers in airport hubs, there was no reason why a solution could not be found to open up routes between the UK and the UAE.

Currently, arrivals to the UK – including the UAE – are required to travel straight to a government-mandated hotel for 10 days at a cost of £1,750 per adult.

John Grant, partner at UK-based consultancy Midas Aviation

Grant said: “The global economy will never break out of the current situation unless governments becoming trusting on other governments and airports protocols and screening checks which will at least be in line with industry recommended guidelines.”

In the first half of November 2020, when the UAE was briefly added to Britain’s list of quarantine-free countries, flight bookings from the UK to Dubai rose to over 50 percent of the levels in the equivalent period in 2019, according to ForwardKeys data.

While during the first week of January, a whopping 190,365 seats were booked on the Dubai-London Heathrow air route, which has lost its position as the world’s busiest international route.

“The UK Government would be expressing their concern if LHR (London Heathrow) was treated and listed as a red list country purely based on a small risk of connecting traffic passing infections forward; which makes it slightly hypocritical to take the current stance,” said Grant.

“Rather than finding a more effective screening process the UK has again applied its blunt instrument of ignorance to the aviation industry.”

There are over 150,000 people from the UK living in the UAE and, with the summer approaching, there is a huge appetite from many to travel home, although an obvious reluctance given the restrictions.

Linus Bauer, managing director of Bauer Aviation Advisory, told Arabian Business: “Putting countries on each other’s red list has become a political ball game during the pandemic to date – it is no longer about the Covid-19 situation in a country any more.”

The UAE boasts one of the highest vaccination rates in the world per head of population. To date, the country has administered over 11.8 million doses, while cases have fallen to around 1,400 new detections daily.

“If the status as an international transit hub is the main concern for the UK government, then they should at least allow the restoring of the point-to-point traffic between the UAE and UK without transit passengers onboard (safe air travel corridor between UK and UAE),” said Bauer.

“These flights can also be operated from dedicated gates at Dubai and Abu Dhabi since both airports have plenty of room to offer at the moment. There is always a creative and feasible solution to every problem or concern.”

Linus Bauer, managing director of Bauer Aviation Advisory

At Arabian Travel Market on Monday, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of Emirates Airline, told media he expected to be off the UK’s ‘red list’ very soon.

“Our officials are already speaking and taking that very seriously; talking to the government and to the officials there to make sure that we should be very soon off the red list,” Sheikh Ahmed told CNBC.

And while Bauer was optimistic that the UAE may get moved up to the ‘amber list’, requiring any travellers to quarantine for ten days on their return and take two PCR tests, Grant was less optimistic.

He said: “It is very unlikely that any country will move from the red list to green in the next announcement; it would make a mockery of the classifications, although that is probably the case already. So the best that the UAE can hope for is to move to Amber and because of the UK’s issue around transfer traffic, even that may not happen this time around.”