Easyjet boss blasts Boris over travel restrictions

Easyjet’s boss blasted travel restrictions on fully vaccinated Britons as the budget airline ramped up its flight schedule.

Chief executive Johan Lundgren said ‘expensive and unnecessary testing’ for low-risk destinations ‘just doesn’t make sense’. 

The UK’s biggest budget carrier will fly at around 60 per cent of pre-pandemic levels this summer.

Easyjet chief exec Johan Lundgren (pictured) said ‘expensive and unnecessary testing’ for low-risk destinations ‘just doesn’t make sense

It is desperately trying to salvage its most lucrative season after it lost £3.5million a day in the quarter to June.

Easyjet said it was having to become less reliant on the UK and has been adding more flights between continental cities as European countries have relaxed travel restrictions more quickly. 

Around two thirds of its bookings are coming from Europe – when they would usually be split equally with the UK.

Lundgren said: ‘You can go into a very crowded nightclub with no face mask and with no vaccination and no testing, but you cannot fly and lie on a beach in a low-risk destination that has proven much lower infection levels in the UK and you will be [subject to] different kinds of unnecessary expensive testing and requirements, that just doesn’t make sense.’

He said the UK was moving in the right direction on opening up but that there should be ‘many, many more destinations’ on the green list.

Lundgren added: ‘Unnecessary testing should not be in place because it does restrict travel for millions of passengers in a way that is unfair and not backed up by science.’

Britons travelling back from countries on the ‘green list’ must take a test before returning and book and pay for another one after they arrive in England.

The airline revealed it racked up a £318million loss in the last quarter, when it ran just 17 per cent of its 2019 flights and one in three seats were left empty. 

Revenues came in at £213million – a sharp increase from the £7million collected the same time last year when the first and most restrictive lockdowns were in force.