Travel News

BY Chinedu Eze with agency report 

China has barred non-Chinese travellers from the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Philippines, imposing new border restrictions in response to the worsening Covid-19 pandemic.

The Guardian of London reported that the Chinese embassy in the UK said recently that China’s borders are now closed to those arriving from the UK, including those with valid visas and residence permits.

The measure, a reversal of recently loosened restrictions, comes as England began a month-long lockdown in an effort to stop a resurgent outbreak. The country has the highest death toll in Europe of almost 48,000 deaths.

“This is a temporary measure taken by China in response to the current pandemic,” the Chinese embassy in the UK said. The embassy in Belgium also released a statement announcing restrictions for nationals traveling from Belgium, which has the highest per capita number of cases in Europe.

Last Thursday, the embassy in the Philippines, which has among the largest number of cases in South-east Asia, followed suit. The notices said the new restrictions would not affect those with diplomatic, official or courtesy visas or crewmembers of international flights, trains or other vessels.

Beijing, which has for months largely contained the outbreak and seen the Chinese economy begin to recover, also imposed new rules on those who are allowed in.

As of last Friday, all passengers from the US, Germany, the Czech Republic and France must have tested negative for the Covid-19 virus as well as for antibodies within 48 hours of travelling.

Passengers from Denmark are subject to the rule from November 7, while starting from November 8, those travelling from Australia, Singapore and Japan would be subject to the same rule.

Officials have said that the antibody test was to guard against false negatives in nucleic acid tests. A negative test for the antibody immunoglobulin M, or IgM, the body’s first response to the virus, would indicate that a person has never been exposed or that they have been infected and recovered.

.Plans to establish aircraft leasing company

BY Chinedu Eze 

To make it easy, cheaper and timely for Nigerian airlines to maintain their aircraft, the federal government plans to establish a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) in Abuja. It has also concluded plan to establish an Aviation Leasing Company (ALC), in order to enable Nigerian airlines lease aircraft at cheaper rate.

Government said this was part of its efforts to optimise business opportunities in the Nigerian aviation value chain. The government had earlier requested for pre-qualified bidders to submit their bids in response to the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the establishment of an Aviation Leasing Company (ALC) and establishment of a Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) centre at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja.

According to information from the Ministry of Aviation, the bidders who had already bided for these projects were qualified having passed the Request for Qualification (RFQ) stage of the procurement process, disclosing that the RFP submission deadline closed on Friday, October 30, 2020 and Tuesday November 3, 2020, respectively. The Ministry said the evaluation of the bids commenced immediately, after which the preferred bidders would be announced and invited for contract negotiations.

“Thereafter the Full Business Case will be developed and submitted to the Federal Executive Council for approval and subsequent agreements will be signed between the investors and the Federal Government of Nigeria represented by the Ministry of Aviation,” the Ministry said.

According to the Federal Ministry of Aviation, the objectives of the projects are multi-pronged. “These include curtailment of capital flight, easing the leasing process for domestic airlines, encouraging foreign investment (FI), enhancing technology transfer to Nigerians, improving aircraft maintenance turnaround time, localizing aircraft maintenance in compliance with regulation, and generally develop the aviation sector in the country,” the Ministry also said.

The Ministry explained that there is no Aviation Leasing Company in Africa at the moment, as the existing ones are owned and run by major international lessors who are reluctant, and rightly so, to lease aircraft to African airlines due to the perceived risks, principally revenue, maintenance and legal risks.

“For the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility, which will be sited at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, the plan is to have in place an independent MRO facility that will cater to West and Central Africa market. Also importantly, the MRO facility will service the proposed National Carrier and the Aviation Leasing Company.

“The business justification for the proposed MRO is the fact that there is no facility of this nature in West and Central Africa to address aircraft maintenance challenges. Most airlines in Africa ferry their aircraft overseas for maintenance and the huge cost of scarce hard currency is enormous,” the Ministry also said.

According to Catamaran Nigeria Limited, one of the transaction advisers for the projects, the proposed ALC will be structured as a Joint Venture (JV) between the Federal government and the private investor. The business model would be, in the short term, to lease aircraft from international lessors and subsequently sub-lease to African airlines while long-term plan is to acquire, own and lease aircraft directly to African airlines.

“The proposed MRO which will also run through Public Private Partnership (PPP) using the Build, Operate and Transfer model is expected to have the capacity to service both Narrow Body (Jet and Turboprop) and Wide Body aircraft.

“Government, on its part, is willing to support the initiatives by establishing a Free Zone at the airports and has initiated the process for approval. The MRO will also enjoy maintenance exclusivity for the proposed National Carrier and the Aviation Leasing Company as well as some land lease relief considerations,” the Ministry added.

With Kamala Harris as his deputy, Biden is expected to reverse the move of the outgoing Trump administration to revoke work permits to the spouses of H-1B visas

US President-elect Joe Biden plans to increase the number of high-skilled visas, including the H-1B, and eliminate the limit on employment-based visas by country, both of which are expected to benefit tens of thousands of Indian professionals impacted by some immigration policies of the outgoing Trump administration.

With Kamala Harris as his deputy, Biden is expected to reverse the move of the outgoing Trump administration to revoke work permits to the spouses of H-1B visas, which had adversely impacted a large number of Indian families in the US.

All these are part of a comprehensive immigration reform that the Biden administration plans to work on, either in one go or in separate pieces.

"High skilled temporary visas should not be used to disincentivise recruiting workers already in the US for in-demand occupations. An immigration system that crowds out high-skilled workers in favour of only entry level wages and skills threatens American innovation and competitiveness," according to a policy document issued by the Biden campaign.

"Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labour market and not used to undermine wages. Then, Biden will support expanding the number of high-skilled visas and eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs," it said.

H-1B visas, which expand the available pool of high skilled workers in the US, is a non-immigrant visa that allows American companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

Employment-based visas, also known as green cards, allow migrants to gain lawful permanent residence in the US in order to engage in skilled work.

Noting that currently, the number of employment-based visas is capped at 140,000 each year, without the ability to be responsive to the state of the labour market or demands from domestic employers, the policy document said that as president, Biden will work with Congress to increase the number of visas awarded for permanent, employment-based immigration - and promote mechanisms to temporarily reduce the number of visas during times of high US unemployment.

In June, Trump had suspended the H-1B visas along with other types of foreign work visas until the end of 2020 to protect American workers. In October, the Trump administration had announced new restrictions on the H-1B nonimmigrant visa programme, which it said is aimed at protecting American workers, restoring integrity and to better guarantee that H-1B petitions are approved only for qualified beneficiaries and petitioners.

According to the policy document, Biden will also exempt from any cap recent graduates of PhD programmes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields in the US who are poised to make some of the most important contributions to the world economy.

"Biden believes that foreign graduates of a US doctoral programme should be given a green card with their degree and that losing these highly trained workers to foreign economies is a disservice to our own economic competitiveness," it said.

The Biden administration plans to create a new visa category to allow cities and counties to petition for higher levels of immigrants to support their growth.

"The disparity in economic growth between US cities, and between rural communities and urban areas, is one of the great imbalances of today's economy. Some cities and many rural communities struggle with shrinking populations, an erosion of economic opportunity, and local businesses that face unique challenges.

"Others simply struggle to attract a productive workforce and innovative entrepreneurs. As president, Biden will support a programme to allow any county or municipal executive of a large or midsize county or city to petition for additional immigrant visas to support the region's economic development strategy, provided employers in those regions certify there are available jobs, and that there are no workers to fill them," the policy document said.

The holders of these visas would be required to work and reside in the city or county that petitioned for them, and would be subject to the same certification protections as other employment-based immigrants, it argued.

According to the policy document, Biden believes that keeping families together and allowing eligible immigrants to join their American relatives on US soil is critically important, but the current system is poorly designed with per-country caps that prevent applications from being approved in a timely fashion.

That means approved applicants may wait decades to be reunited with their families, it said.

"As president, Biden will support family-based immigration by preserving family unification as a foundation of our immigration system; by allowing any approved applicant to receive a temporary non-immigrant visa until the permanent visa is processed; and by supporting legislation that treats the spouse and children of green card holders as the immediate relatives they are, exempting them from caps, and allowing parents to bring their minor children with them at the time they immigrate," the policy paper said.  

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

BY   Lottie Gross, travel writer

Amid fraying tempers and cancelled flights, Heathrow has never felt so dark and depressing 
Arriving at the airport is no longer a thrill. Coronavirus has, of course, killed much of the joy of travel – and new lockdown measures and a fresh international travel ban for Thursday has put both travellers and airlines into a state of panic.

Instead of that little flutter you feel as you head off into the unknown, there is dread upon check-in and uncertainty beyond security – and many travellers will be lucky if they even get that far. 

I spent Monday at Heathrow's Terminal 5, taking measure of the mood as Thursday's deadline approaches. The scenes were bleak, to say the least. The terminal, which can see up to 40 million passengers each year and usually has over 200,000 departing flights annually, was a shadow of its former self – as it has been for much of 2020.

When I arrived, there were so few people it seemed as though the staff outnumbered the passengers, and the departure boards showed little movement. The schedule was unable to fill even four screens. 

Cancellations have been rife on both sides of the coin – with the likes of Easyjet pulling ‘UK-touching’ flights, while thousands of travellers have axed their plans for fear of being stranded abroad. It’s no surprise that Ryanair is now embroiled in fresh battles over refunds, and travel agents are dealing with an onslaught of reimbursement requests. 

It’s easy to dismiss the entire debacle as another government omnishambles, one of the many we have seen throughout 2020 – but as I wandered around Heathrow I found a handful of human stories at the centre of it all, a reminder of the gravity of our situation.

“If I don’t get on a flight by Thursday, I’m out of a job,” construction worker George Mc Grath told me as we shared a bench overlooking the BA check-in desks. He pulled down his mask and shot me a friendly but weary smile so I could take his picture. He’d been there since the night before, and still had no flight to board – BA cancelled his route to Nigeria on Sunday night, and by Monday lunchtime there was still no word on when he might depart. 

For a man whose livelihood was on the line thanks to BA’s scheduling issues, he was surprisingly chirpy, and was looking forward to getting away from the UK. “I'd rather get there than be here,” he told me. “The public here are being dictated to now and that's not what we have a government for.”

Sheila, meanwhile, was excited to finally be reunited with her partner after eight months apart. She arrived in the UK for a shoulder replacement in March, just before lockdown. As the pandemic swept across the world, the borders in her now home country, Canada, closed up – leaving her stuck here.

After finally getting special approval for travel from the Canadian Government, she booked a quarantine hotel in Toronto. Successful journey permitting, she’ll be reunited with her partner in a fortnight. 

But her love story is bittersweet. On departing England, she leaves behind her frail 90-year-old mother, not knowing if she will ever see her again. “She said to me 'don't even attempt to come back and see me – it's not worth it, you might get stuck again.'”

It’s stories like this that make my blood boil and my skin prickle with the injustice. It can be hard to feel sympathy for those who've cancelled ski trips or winter sun getaways, unless you're one of them – but the power of travel goes far beyond a holiday. The connectivity we’ve built up around the world has changed lives, and now its destruction is devastating them.

Terminal 2 now has a pre-departure testing centre – but it's only open to selected passengers
Terminal 2 now has a pre-departure testing centre – but it's only open to selected passengers CREDIT: LOTTIE GROSS
In Terminal 2, the anger was palpable. Here, I saw desperate travellers pleading with ticket desk agents – “But I HAVE a green card” yelled one particularly irate passenger trying to get to San Francisco. Others simply slumped themselves on the floor, surrounded by luggage and resigned to a long wait. 

I had expected to find at least a few holidaymakers merrily heading off to the Canary Islands or Sweden, where air corridors are offering a tempting getaway from England’s impending lockdown. Agents have even reported a flurry of bookings over the last few days, as the Government announced it wasn’t encouraging anybody abroad to return home as soon as possible after November 5, unlike during the last lockdown.

But instead I met people at their most miserable – blocked by bureaucracy and worn down by a virus that has wreaked havoc for everyone, be it their holidays, relationships or livelihoods. 

• Air France is expected to operate at less than 35 percent of its year-earlier capacity in the fourth quarter

LONDON: Air France KLM Group has opened its new regional headquarters in Dubai Airport Freezone as the carrier comes under renewed pressure from a resurgent coronavirus pandemic. The Air France KLM team relocated to the new offices in Dubai Airport Freezone which have been designed to support the group’s sustainability goals.

“This announcement comes as part of the efforts and incentive packages provided by the emirate to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic through a highly flexible approach,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, chairman of Dubai Airport Freezone Authority. “This strategy has helped ensure business continuity and growth and accelerate recovery to the next stage, especially within the aviation sector, which has been affected by the global restrictions and measures that were applied at the beginning of the pandemic.”

Dubai’s huge aviation economy has been devastated by the collapse of international air travel as carriers including Emirates and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad have been forced to cut costs, axe jobs and ask some employees to take unpaid leave.

Air France-KLM last week reported a €1.05 billion ($1.24 billion) quarterly operating loss and warned that business conditions could deteriorate further amid new lockdowns across. 

The carrier recently resumed services to the emirate with six weekly Air France and daily KLM flights to Dubai.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is making good progress with a plan to allow COVID-19 tests to cut a 14-day quarantine period for those returning from abroad, a change which could help fuel a travel recovery once current lockdowns end, the transport minister said.

Airport bosses welcomed the update from the minister, Grant Shapps, at an online conference but said more needed to be done. The top priority for them is that the government eliminates the requirement for quarantine through testing for the coronavirus.

“We’re making very good progress on a ‘test to release programme’ to launch once we’re out of this lockdown,” Shapps said on Monday. “Once we emerge from the lockdown, we can roll out new systems to help get people flying and travelling again.”

UK airports and airlines said that a shorter quarantine period was even more crucial after a new four-week lockdown imposed in England until Dec. 2 wiped out any of the remaining meagre income they were still making from low levels of travel during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They have called for extra government help, asking for tax holidays from requirements such as air passenger duty and business rates.

But Shapps said the primary solution to aviation companies’ financial problems would be getting customers flying again, “ideally through the development of an effective vaccine”.

Separately, positive news about a Pfizer vaccine while the conference was being held boosted UK airline shares on Monday, with British Airways owner IAG ICAG.L and easyJet EZJ.L both up 30%.

The chief executive of Gatwick, Britain’s second biggest airport after London’s Heathrow, told the conference that he favoured an antigen test 72 hours before departure as a way to end the need for quarantine.

Shapps said that rapid actual-flow tests for the coronavirus being trialled in Liverpool which give results in less than an hour should be seen as an optimistic development. “Ultimately it could open the way for non-quarantined air travel.”

The government was also working with partner countries to consider pre-departure quarantine and testing options that would end the need for quarantine upon arrival at destination, he said.

Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Kate Holton and Mark Heinrich

EMIRATES Airlines said it has increased its flight frequency on the Lagos / Dubai route from four times weekly to daily service effective November1, 2020.

The expanded schedule, the carrier said, offers enhanced connectivity for customers to Emirates’ destination network via Dubai to over 100 destinations.

Emirates operates its modern Boeing 777-300ERs between Lagos and Dubai.

To ensure the safety of travelers,  the carrier said visitors, and the community, COVID-19 PCR tests can be  taken within 96 hours of travel , which is mandatory for passengers arriving to Dubai and the entire United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The airline said Nigerian travelers can now travel with confidence because of the  free cover on COVID-19 related medical expenses should they be diagnosed with COVID-19 during their travel.

The insurance cover, the UAE carrier said, will be effective for passengers travelling from December 31, 2020 and will remain valid for 31 days in the first sector of their journey.

In a statement, the carrier explained : ”  This means Emirates passengers  can continue to benefit from the added assurance of this cover, even if they travel onwards to another city after arriving at their Emirates destination.

“The free, global cover for COVID-19 related costs is further complemented by the comprehensive set of measures that Emirates has put in place at every step of the customer journey to ensure the safety of its passengers and employees on the ground and in the air, including the distribution of complimentary hygiene kits containing masks, gloves, hand sanitizers and antibacterial wipes to all passengers.”

AIR Peace at the weekend explained its aircraft weight policy, saying it dropped some luggage at Abuja Airport last Friday to ensure the carrier did not exceed the maximum take-off weight of its plane.

The airline said the weight policy was in line with its consistent safety practice of ensuring that its operations aligned with global prescription on conditions of safe flight as it affects allowed take-off weight of aircraft.

The clarification by the airline, its spokesman, Mr Stanley Olisa, said became imperative given the misrepresentation on some platforms that its aircraft were unsafe.

A passenger, a lawyer, alleged that some luggage were left behind at Abuja Airport on Friday due to ‘weight restriction issues’ .

Air Peace said the luggage was deliberately left because it was unsafe to overweight the aircraft.

“We are stating categorically that all our aircraft are safe and airworthy, and it is a globally accepted fact that every aircraft has a weight limit.

“For the flight in question, we did not carry all the luggage because the aircraft had reached its maximum weight capacity. It would have been unsafe and dangerous to do otherwise. We did the right thing- a safety measure that is known worldwide.

‘’Airlines, all over the world, drop bags to avoid being overweight. So how does this translate to being unsafe? ”

Last week, Air Peace  announced the arrival of another ERJ-145 which has been undergoing C-Check.

The aircraft, with registration number 5N-BVD, arrived Lagos last week.

“Most of our aircraft were out on C-Check during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have started arriving one after the other” , the airline said.

Virgin Atlantic (VS, London Heathrow) has announced it will launch a new 2x weekly route from London Heathrow to St. Vincent Argyle Int'l in June 2021, marking the first intercontinental service out of the Caribbean microstate.

The airline said it would use 264-seater A330-300s on the route.

"St. Vincent and the Grenadines as well as the Caribbean region as a whole, represent an extremely exciting opportunity for us. With many islands implementing rigorous COVID-19 protocols including testing before arrival and a short quarantine period for visitors, the islands are open for tourism and are a haven for travellers in search of sun," Chief Commercial Officer Juha Jarvinen said.

According to the ch-aviation capacities module, St. Vincent currently sees domestic and regional scheduled services, including flights from the United States and Canada. The largest operator at Argyle Int'l airport is SVG Air (SVD, St. Vincent Argyle Int'l) with a 38.3% market share by weekly seating capacity.

Virgin Atlantic said it was targeting both tourists and travellers seeking to visit friends and families. The airline's Caribbean network currently comprises services to Antigua, Bridgetown, Grenada, and Montego Bay. It said it was planning to restart flights to Port of Spain within the coming months.

Meanwhile, another Caribbean state is hoping to boost its position as an international travel market through the construction of a new airport capable of serving long-haul flights. Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit recently revealed that the government has already bought 411 acres (around 1,660,000 square metres) of land. The new airport, which is set to be located near the existing Dominica Douglas-Charles airport, will be entirely funded through contributions from Dominica's Citizenship for Investment programme. The government has been setting aside USD5 million income from the programme every year for the last few years.

Dominica Douglas-Charles airport has a single 1,756-metre-long runway and sees only regional services to other destinations in the Caribbean.

BY  Simon Calder

Planes and ships travelling directly from Denmark, and accompanied freight, will no longer be able to land or dock at English ports.

 The overnight move was made in response to fears about a new coronavirus mutation from mink bred at Danish farms transmitting to humans.

Travellers from Denmark lost UK quarantine exemption in the early hours of Friday. This was followed on Saturday by an unprecedented outright ban on non-UK travellers from Denmark – and the requirement for flight crew arriving from there to self-isolate.

In its third successive early-morning announcement, the Department for Transport (DfT) has imposed more stringent rules than for any other country.

The statement read: “Passenger planes and ships travelling directly from Denmark, and accompanied freight, will no longer be able to land or dock at English ports.”

Truck drivers who have travelled from or through Denmark in the past two weeks can no longer enter England unless they live in the UK.

The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to follow suit.

The DfT says the extended travel ban is in response to “health authorities in Denmark reporting widespread outbreaks of coronavirus in mink farms, with a variant strain of the virus spreading to some local communities".

But the Danish foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod, has questioned the UK’s reaction. In careful diplomatic language on Saturday he called the travel ban “drastic”.

In a statement, Mr Kofod said: “The World Health Organisation is not recommending restrictions on international travel in this situation, and is recognising the steps taken by the Danish authorities.”

“We are currently reaching out to ensure that any relevant information is shared with the British authorities.”

The travel ban and expanded self-isolation requirements will be reviewed after a week.

The new flight ban will only affect SAS, which normally flies between Copenhagen and London Heathrow.

British Airways, Ryanair and Loganair yesterday grounded flights between Denmark and the UK.

The latest government move comes as the NHS and Public Health England issued new instructions on treating patients who have been in Denmark in the previous two weeks.

Non-urgent treatment is to be postponed, while emergency cases must be kept isolated from other patients.