UK-US travel: Fears emerge that ban might not lift until end of November

Airlines consider pushing back schedules

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The travel industry is increasingly fearful that travel from the UK to the US might not reopen until the end of November, it has been reported.

The US’s travel ban imposed on British tourists has been in place since March 2020.

There were hopes it might lift next month, with flights able to resume in earnest in September, after the president’s chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, said there was a “reasonable chance” that travel could open up by the end of the summer.

However, one unnamed major airline told The Telegraph that it would be pushing back the launch of scheduled London-New York flights from September to November.

Virgin Atlantic has also delayed restarting Heathrow-Las Vegas services until at least mid-September.

The Independent’s travel correspondent, Simon Calder, has previously revealed the extreme uncertainty expressed by airlines and holiday companies.

“In the past 48 hours I have asked a number of travel industry chief executives about when the current presidential proclamation banning arrivals from the UK might be lifted. Their answers and predictions range from ‘September’ to ‘no idea’,” he said.

“The main problem now appears to be two-fold: inertia (once draconian rules are imposed, they can be slow to remove), combined with an unwillingness in Washington DC to complicate the difficult domestic situation at a time when the Delta variant is running wild across America, especially in the key tourism state of Florida.”

The UK facilitated travel from the US in August, when the government announced that travellers fully vaccinated in the States could swerve quarantine when entering Britain from an amber list country.

As the US is graded amber, it means fully jabbed American tourists are free to visit without self-isolating, provided they test negative for coronavirus before departing for the UK and take a PCR test within two days of arriving.

However, the US still hasn’t indicated when it might introduce a reciprocal arrangement, and currently does not recognise the AstraZeneca vaccine – one of the three key jabs administered in the UK.