The UK-UAE travel route has seen a 43 percent downturn in bookings as Britain battles surging coronavirus cases and much of the country is placed under Tier 4 lockdown.
Despite initial optimum for the UK-UAE air traffic route in the first half of November, when the UAE was added to the UK’s list of quarantine-free countries, there was an “immediate” plunge in flight bookings following Britain’s strict stay-at-home guidelines, said London-based aviation analytics firm Forward Keys.
“On December 19, in response to a new strain of Covid-19, the UK government announced Tier 4 travel restrictions. Consequently, there was an immediate decline in flight bookings, with air tickets issued 43 percent down on the week before,” Forward Keys spokesperson David Tarsh told Arabian Business.
“The spike in bookings we saw in November – when flight bookings rose to over 50 percent of the levels in the equivalent period in 2019 – has now been dented. The pessimism predictions we had just before Christmas have been justified by the latest data.”
However, Tarsh added that the appetite to travel is “still strong”, as searches for flights from London to Dubai were slightly above the equivalent week in 2019.
At the time of going to press, the UAE borders remained open to British travellers, while other Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman have gradually reopened for UK visitors with varying restrictions following Britain’s surge in cases. Across the world, many countries continue to ban UK travellers amid concerns of a mutant coronavirus strain.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed on December 23 that two cases of a new variant had been identified in the UK.
The number of further lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus recorded in a single day in the UK also hit a new high of 53,135 as of December 29, according to government figures.
Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at London-based aviation consultancy StrategicAero Research, said whlle the UK-UAE air corridor seems to be intact, any further Covid-related restrictions will likely “significantly” damage demand for travel to the UAE.
Since grounding its entire fleet in late March due to the global coronavirus lockdown, Emirates has gradually announced flights to soak up increased demand. Emirates increased its twice-daily Dubai-London A380 and once daily Boeing 777 flights to four daily A380 services from November 27.
“Emirates has been keen to reactivate its A380 planes to cater for demand out of the UK and from Heathrow, in particular for flights to Dubai, however, they may well be forced to downgrade to 777-300ERs if demand tapers off,” Ahmad said.
He added that further UK lockdown restrictions would likely “batter” the number of Dubai-bound British Airways’ flights
“Another dynamic to factor in is the possibility of the Midlands also entering Tier 4,” he said. “Emirates’ Birmingham-Dubai flights are nearly always full, despite the pandemic – so that’s another possible revenue channel that will be hit.”
For travel demand to recover, the UK, UAE and global countries will have to “up the ante” in rolling out vaccines for Covid-19, Ahmad said.
“It’s bad enough that any recovery to pre-Covid levels will take more than half a decade if we’re lucky, but additional restrictions will set that back even further,” he said.
The expert said the UAE is likely to wait until the “last possible moment” to ban UK travellers, following updates from the UK government about how the situation is being managed given its continued changes.
“If the UAE does ban UK flights, while Emirates and Etihad would no doubt lose significant traffic given the recent air corridor opening just last month, they are still able to temper and redeploy capacity to other markets,” Ahmad said.
“For BA, it will be devastating, because we’ve already seen upwards of 40 countries ban UK flights – nearly all of which BA flies to,” he said.
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