The UK's management of the pandemic has been labelled a 'shambles' by the boss of Ryanair with the travel industry facing weeks of more restrictions.
The airline's boss Michael O'Leary slammed Boris Johnson’s 'mismanagement' of Covid and the reopening of the UK economy following the nation’s successful vaccine rollout programme.
He highlighted the removal of Portugal from the green list for quarantine-free international travel after just two weeks “without any material” change in Covid case numbers in the country.
Meanwhile, Malta with higher vaccine rates and lower case numbers than the UK, still has not been moved to the green list.
Ryanair accused the UK travel policy of being a confusing “go-stop-go-stop” system, which was causing untold damage to the country's inbound tourism industry with UK government continuing to implement travel restrictions as if the vaccine programme had not taken place.
Mr O’Leary said: "The UK’s Covid travel policy is a shambles. The green list is non-existent because countries such as Malta and Portugal, with lower Covid case numbers than the UK and rapidly rising vaccination rates, remain on amber.
"Meanwhile, UK citizens almost 80 per cent of whom will be vaccinated by the end of June, continue to face Covid restrictions on travel to and from the European Union, despite the fact that the majority of the European Union citizens will also be vaccinated by the end of June.
"UK tourism and aviation needs a pragmatic travel policy, which permits vaccinated UK and EU citizens to travel between the UK and the EU without the need for quarantine or negative PCR tests.
"This will at least allow the UK tourism industry to plan for what is left of the summer season and get hundreds of thousands of people back to work."
Mr O'Leary added: "It is time for Boris Johnson to end his gross mismanagement of Covid and take advantage of the UK’s successful vaccine programme to allow the restoration of free movement of vaccinated citizens and their families to and from the EU, where case rates are lower than the UK and vaccination rates are rising rapidly”.
