IAG International Airlines Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Willie Walsh has said that the UK government's announcement that it will introduce a 14-day quarantine will slow his plans to begin adding more flights this summer. Last week the IAG boss, parent company of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Vueling Airlines, said he intended to operate about 1,000 flights a day between July and September as the market begins its recovery.

Speaking to the UK Transport Committee on May 11, Walsh said the plan would force the group to review plans to restart more flights in July, with the number of services likely to be “pretty minimal” instead. “We had been planning to resume on a pretty significant basis of flying in July. I think we’ll have to review that based on what the Prime Minister said yesterday,” said the CEO.

The UK government published a 50-page document on May 11 outlining its COVID-19 recovery strategy which included a 14-day quarantine on new arrivals to the country, however, no start or end date was supplied. People landing in the UK will have to provide contact and accommodation details and agree to self-isolate for two weeks. International travellers will be required to stay in state-arranged accommodation if they cannot show where they plan to self-isolate, although people arriving from Ireland and France are exempt from this requirement.

“I don’t think anybody thought the UK government would actually implement it [a quarantine requirement] if they were serious about getting the economy moving again,” added Walsh.

London Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye also backed up the message from IAG: "The government needs to urgently lay out a roadmap for how they will reopen borders once the disease has been beaten, and to take an immediate lead in agreeing a Common International Standard for health in aviation that will allow passengers who don’t have the infection to travel freely.” The airport, which is BA's biggest base, said in its statement following the government's quarantine decision that its passenger numbers were down 97% in April with the airport processing just 200,000 people – the same number it would typically serve in just one day.