The shifting sands of COVID travel restrictions dealt the budding trans-Atlantic travel recovery a blow this week after the European Union removed the US from its safe countries list.
Passengers from the US and Israel join those from Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia as they face greater restrictions on travel to the EU after they were removed from the list on August 30.
The EU recommended the gradual lifting of travel restrictions such as quarantine for a number of countries in June in response to ongoing vaccination campaigns but warned at the time it would be subject to review.
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The latest decision, in response to rising cases of the delta variant of COVID, advised members to restrict non-essential travel to the affected countries.
While it is not legally binding on the bloc’s 27 member states, some countries, such as Germany, had already been tightening restrictions.
The EU requires countries to have less than 75 new COVID cases daily per 100,000 people over the previous 14 days.
The US broke through that threshold as COVID cases soared and hospitalizations topped 100,000 a day. Deaths are now seven times higher than they were in July. according to USA Today.
But there are still countries where the EU remains comfortable, at least at August 30, in recommending that members gradually lift border restrictions on travel.
They include Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea and, subject to reciprocity, China.
The US Centers for Disease Control has also been updating its travel recommendations and has warned Americans in the past two months to avoid travel to a range of countries that includes France, Israel, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
Airlines had entered summer optimistic about the trans-Atlantic market but that enthusiasm dimmed when the traffic remained effectively one-way: US citizens could travel to Europe but EU and UK passport holders still faced restrictions on US entry.
One upshot of the rise of the delta variant is that airlines worldwide had already cut back their planned seat capacity by 100 million seats since the first week of August, according to scheduling experts OAG.
This was before the EU decision and OAG’s John Grant expects more cuts among US carriers as the summer season draws to a close and they adjust to the EU decision.
“Should the UK Government follow the EU and restrict US nationals visiting, then the airlines recently launched JFK–LHR operation will face a challenging winter,’’ he said.
“The US airlines may have had a reasonably strong domestic summer season, but the international restrictions will start to bite in the next few months, especially with corporate demand remaining soft.”
