Business travellers should be used to pioneer transatlantic flying, leading bosses say

As Lufthansa announces the expansion of its coronavirus testing centre at its Frankfurt hub, pressure is growing on the UK government to allow alternatives to two weeks of quarantine.

The German airline is increasing capacity from 4,500 to 10,000 passengers a day. But the UK government has yet to agree to any use of testing to limit the current 14 days of self-isolation for arrivals from most countries.

Virgin Atlantic’s chief executive, Shai Weiss, told the BBC’s Today programme: “The economy, which is already in deep recession, will not take off unless we have travel and tourism back on track.

“The only way to do that, I believe, in the interim period before treatment and a vaccine are made available, is through testing.”

He advocates testing on arrival until pre-departure testing with near-instant results becomes feasible.

Boris Johnson and other ministers have rejected the concept of a single test on arrival, claiming it will pick up only seven per cent of infected travellers.

Their assertion, which is a misrepresentation of the conclusions of a theoretical study by Public Health England three months ago, has been rubbished by one of Britain’s leading statisticians.

Lufthansa says that one per cent of passengers have tested positive in the Frankfurt airport tests.

A UK government spokesperson said: “Work is ongoing with clinicians, the devolved administrations and the travel industry to consider if and how testing could be used in the future to reduce the self-isolation period.

“Any potential change to the testing for arrivals would need to be robust in minimising the chance that positive cases are missed.”

Meanwhile a leading travel boss has proposed that business travellers should be used to pioneer transatlantic flying,

Drew Crawley, chief commercial officer for American Express Global Business Travel, said a limited number of closely monitored executives should be able to fly on the world’s busiest intercontinental link, between London and New York.

While British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and US carriers are still operating a limited number of services, the planes are largely empty and represent a small fraction of the normal 30-plus departures each way.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Mr Crawley said: “It’s phenomenal the amount of trade between the two cities. Let’s use this highly profitable set of customers for airlines, so at least they can justify flying the aeroplanes, to test the airport processes, to test the aircraft processes and to test the tracing processes.

“We know exactly who these customers are, we know where they sat on the aeroplane, we know who picked them up at the airport, and in some cases we know the restaurants they ate at. So we have a vast amount of data on those customers in the event there might be an infection.”

But Rory Boland, travel editor at Which?, said: “Pressuring the government to immediately introduce universal airport testing across the UK feels like pie in the sky at the moment.

“We don't even have enough tests/laboratories to process tests for people who think they have the illness.”