Ahead of curbs, airfares hit $1,000 as UK tourists rush to leave Portugal

U.K. tourists scrambled to return from Portugal before a quarantine requirement kicks in next Tuesday, driving up ticket prices as they rearranged flights ahead of the deadline.

A three-hour British Airways flight from Faro, in the popular Algarve region, to London City airport Monday night costs 711 pounds ($1,000), according to comparison website Skyscanner. The following day, when arriving passengers will be subject to 10 days of self-isolation, the airline is offering flights to Heathrow for 80% less.

U.K. authorities caught airlines and holidaymakers by surprise on Thursday with a decision to remove Portugal from the green list of countries where travel was relatively easy. The abrupt move echoes the disruption that took hold last summer, when sudden changes to quarantine rules forced vacationers to rush home at short notice. Now carriers are hastily rearranging schedules and contemplating another high season lost to the coronavirus crisis.

“The government has torn up its own rule book and ignored the science, throwing peoples’ plans into chaos,” said EasyJet Plc Chief Executive Officer Johan Lundgren in a statement Thursday. “This decision essentially cuts the U.K. off from the rest of the world.”

Abrupt Shift

Less than a month ago, airlines rushed to add seats to Portugal when it became the only major sun-spot green-listed in the U.K.’s traffic-light system that began on May 17. The hope with the first three-week review was for an expansion of the list, to places like Spain’s Balearic islands and Malta, where infection rates are low.

But no countries were added to the green list and Portugal is now going amber, causing disruption to the many Britons who were relying on the set-up to bring certainty to summer travel plans. Many Brits own holiday or retirement homes in Portugal.

With their share prices dropping for a second day and prospects shrinking, airlines are revising their plans. EasyJet is focused on gearing up its fleet within the European Union, it said, where the bloc’s reopening is proceeding in a more deliberate manner.

Package holiday operator Jet2 Plc said Friday that it would delay its restart by one week to July 1, and called on the government to be transparent about the data it was using to make its decisions.

British Airways, owned by IAG SA, is offering seven-night holiday packages in Portugal for as low as 189 pounds per person.

For Portuguese hotels and restaurants, the U.K. move is “disastrous,” according to Portugal’s Tourism Confederation.

“We take note of the British decision to remove Portugal from the travel ‘green list,’ the logic of which we cannot understand,” Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said on Twitter. The country has “clear rules for the safety of those who live here and those who visit us.”