Thousands of Brit families are planning to jet off on summer hols on July 1 despite the new 14-day quarantine, says the boss of Ryanair.
Michael O'Leary claims that that they already have full planes heading out to holiday destinations in places like Portugal, Spain and Italy next month.
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He told Radio 4's Today programme: "Ryanair's taking about 1,000 daily fights from July 1 to destinations all over Europe, from every airport in the UK.
"We are seeing thousands of British families booking their two-week holiday, because they themselves expect they won't be affected by the quarantine when they return home.
"Our bookings for July and August are running at around 50 per cent of where they would normally be at this time of the year.
"So we're looking at something like a 50 per cent load factor compared to a normal July and August where we'd be looking at 90 – 95 per cent.
"I think the outbound holiday season will be fine – we've seen British families over the last two weeks book holidays abroad in Portugal, Spain, etc in their thousands."
Mr O'Leary has joined forces with Easyjet and British Airways to mount a legal challenge to 14-day quarantine rules imposed by the British government.
The controversial policy, drawn up by the PM’s chief of staff Dominic Cummings, came into force at midnight.
Under the policy, all new arrivals – including returning Brits – must fill in a passenger locator form to give an address where they must remain for 14 days.
Health officials will carry out telephone checks and £1,000 fines will be slapped on anybody found breaking the quarantine.
But Mr O'Leary is convinced that a high number of travellers will simply ignore the quarantine when they enter the UK.
As a result, he will carry on with plans to reinstate thousands of daily flights to and from Europe from July 1, regardless of whether the quarantine is still in place.
He said: "The flights are full outbound from the UK. British people are ignoring this quarantine, they know it's rubbish, even the home office admit it's rubbish.
"But what it is doing is deterring and frightening away millions of Europeans, and let's face it, these Europeans are coming from countries with a much lower and better Covid rate than the UK has.
"Ryanair's operating a thousand daily flights to points all over Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy on July 1st, the 2nd, 3rd, and every day after that."
The Sun revealed today that Brits are expected to be able to travel freely across Europe from July without having to quarantine on their return, under a new No10 plan.
Boris Johnson wants to agree a cross-EU exemption to the order for all arrivals to the UK to isolate for 14 days.
Senior Cabinet ministers on the Covid-19 Operations Committee meet this week to finalise criteria to start negotiating air and sea bridges, which will be known as ‘international travel corridors’.
A rapid agreement with the EU’s 27 countries is seen as the top priority to allow a sunshine summer holiday for millions of lockdown-weary Brits.
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