EasyJet PLC said flight bookings jumped more than 300 percent and holiday bookings surged by more than 600 percent week on week, after the UK laid out plans for international travel to restart, hinting that borders could reopen from the middle of May.
The UK-based airline said trips from the UK to beach destinations — such as Malaga, Alicante and Palma in Spain; Faro, Portugal; and Crete, Greece — were the most popular destinations with holidaymakers keenest to travel in August.
July and September were the next most popular months.
Photo: Bloomberg
Shares of carriers like EasyJet, Ryanair Holdings PLC and British Airways owner IAG SA that have a large UK presence advanced on Monday after the plan to gradually reopen the economy was announced.
“We have consistently seen that there is pent-up demand for travel,” EasyJet chief executive officer Johan Lundgren said in a statement. “This surge in bookings shows that this signal from the government that it plans to reopen travel has been what UK consumers have been waiting for.”
The bookings came despite uncertainty over exactly how and when international routes can reopen.
Holidaymakers would know more on April 12 when the British government publishes a travel review. It has said that a lockdown ban on most international travel would stay until at least May 17.
The UK’s vaccine plan is progressing rapidly and more than 17.7 million people, or one-quarter of the population, have already had a first dose of the jab.
That gives hope to airlines and travel companies desperate to start earning revenues after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that the UK would roll back holiday bans and quarantine restrictions and allow travel from the middle of May.
Foreign governments also need to agree that British holidaymakers can visit without the need for quarantine. France and Spain, for instance, have shut their borders to Britons due to new variants of the novel coronavirus.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
This time was supposed to be different. The memorychip sector, famous for its boom-and-bust cycles, had changed its ways. A combination of more disciplined management and new markets for its products — including 5G technology and cloud services — would ensure that companies delivered more predictable earnings. Yet, less than a year after memory companies made such pronouncements, the US$160 billion industry is suffering one of its worst routs ever. There is a glut of the chips sitting in warehouses, customers are cutting orders and product prices have plunged. “The chip industry thought that suppliers were going to have better control,” said
Enimmune Corp (安特羅生技) has obtained marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its EnVAX-A71 vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71), becoming the nation’s first enterovirus vaccine completely made in Taiwan, it said yesterday. After spending 13 years and NT$1.5 billion (US$49.77 million) on the research and development of the vaccine, Enimmune plans to start manufacturing and marketing it by the end of March, the company said in a statement, without disclosing customer order figures. “It is possible that the vaccine would not be included in a national vaccination program initially, and consumers would need to pay for it themselves,” parent
Vaccine skeptics blocking transfusions for life-saving surgeries, Facebook groups inciting violence against doctors and a global search for unvaccinated donors — COVID-19 misinformation has bred a so-called “pure blood” movement. The movement spins anti-vaccine narratives focused on unfounded claims that receiving blood from people inoculated against COVID-19 “contaminates” the body. Some have advocated for blood banks that draw from “pure” unvaccinated people, while medics in North America say they have fielded requests from people demanding transfusions from donors who have not received a vaccine. In closed social media groups, vaccine skeptics — who brand themselves as “pure bloods” — promote violence against doctors
Asteroid mining start-up AstroForge Inc is planning to launch its first two missions to space this year as it seeks to extract and refine metals from deep space. The first launch, scheduled for April, is to test AstroForge’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The second, planned for October, would scout for an asteroid near Earth to mine. The missions are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals from asteroids, with the aim of bringing down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon emissions that stem from mining