Manchester Airport Group announced the impact of the Covic-19 pandemic on its passenger numbers when its CEO called for a roadmap for unrestricted travel.
The group, which also includes London Stansted and East Midlands Airport, has called for closer government collaboration to track new Covid-19 variants “instead of relying on costly PCR testing.”
MAG has also urged the government to create a new restricted free travel category to aid recovery.
The calls came after MAG’s annual passenger numbers dropped 90%, a year since the aviation industry nearly shut down.
The group said a roadmap should be based on “enhanced collaboration” between the UK government and its overseas counterparts to share information on the emergence of new worrisome variants of Covid-19 and “eliminate the need for travelers to buy expensive PCR- To conduct tests “. on their return.
Currently, the UK government is proposing that all passengers – including those returning from the lowest risk “green” destinations – should have a PCR test to collect data that will help with genome sequencing.
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However, MAG said this could be avoided if governments worked together on sequencing and sharing data on variants.
The group announced that it served 93% fewer passengers in March this year and that its rolling 12-month passenger count has dropped 89%.
In March 2019, MAG served more than four million passengers compared to March 2021 when 140,000 passengers were carried – a decrease of 97%.
Manchester Airport only carried 95,798 passengers in March 2021, 89.8% fewer than the 942,900 it had handled 12 months earlier. In Stansted, the number was 44,259 in March, compared to over 800,000 the previous year – a 95% decrease.
At East Midlands Airport, the airport served only 71 passengers for the entire March of this year, up from 106,529 in 2020.
In March 2019, MAG’s 12-month passenger count was nearly 62 million, compared to just over six million in March 2021 – an overall decrease of 90%.
Charlie Cornish, CEO of MAG, said: “The UK government was one of the first to put forward proposals for a resumption of international travel system and should be welcomed for taking the lead.
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“After more than a year of near-total closure – and with so many jobs and so much economic value – it is really important that we get people moving again as soon as it is safe to do so.
“We now need the government to confirm the May 17th start date as soon as possible along with the list of countries that fall into each traffic light category.”
Mr Cornish added, “But the price of testing will hold back the recovery and hamper the sector’s ability to fuel the UK’s economy as a whole.
“The need to have a PCR test on return from the safest countries may be costly and the government must now focus on finding smarter, cheaper ways to manage the risk posed by new variants of concern .
“This should be achieved by building ever closer partnerships with key markets and developing transparent ways of exchanging data in these variants so that these can be effectively contained.
“If we can trust data from other countries and force people to spend money on expensive PCR tests to get the same information, it would be a colossal waste of everyone’s money.
“Covid-19 is a global problem and requires a coordinated international response, not just to bring the pandemic under control, but to develop solutions that enable a return to restriction-free travel between lower-risk countries.
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“The government should also consider the UK’s leading global immunization program to remove other barriers to getting to as many destinations as possible.
“Only if we move back to unrestricted travel now will the aviation industry be on the way to a full recovery and unlock the far-reaching economic benefits that it will bring.”