UK Airlines Launch Legal Challenge to Quarantine Rules

British Airways, EasyJet, and Ryanair on Friday confirmed that they have joined forces to launch a legal challenge to the UK government’s 14-day quarantine requirement, which went into force on June 8. The rival carriers have asked for a court to hear a judicial review of the policy as soon as possible.

The airlines’ legal team will argue that the quarantine is flawed on both legal and scientific grounds in terms of its contribution to efforts to reverse the Covid-19 pandemic. They will also argue that vague government proposals to establish so-called “air bridges” between the UK and other countries are not viable.

Instead, the three companies are asking the government to re-adopt its earlier quarantine policy, introduced on March 10, which applied a requirement to quarantine on passengers arriving in the country from specific high-risk countries where the Covid infection rate is higher than that in the UK. Apart from the U.S., Brazil, Russia, and India, all other countries in the world currently have lower numbers of infections than the UK.

“This would be the most practical and effective solution and enables civil servants to focus on other, more significant, issues arising from the pandemic while bringing the UK in line with much of Europe, which is opening its [internal] borders in mid-June,” said the airlines in a joint statement.

Lawyers will present four core arguments against the applicability of the requirement for all travelers to quarantine at a fixed address for 14 days. These are as follows: that, in terms of criminal law, the quarantine is more stringent than guidelines for people who actually have Covid-19; that the government failed to consult or provide scientific evidence in support of the policy; that workers commuting to and from the UK on a weekly basis are exempted; and that the rule effectively blocks people traveling to and from countries with lower infection rates than the UK.

The UK government has faced strong opposition to the quarantine from members of parliament from its own Conservative party, who supported protests from the aviation industry. The quarantine is due to run for an initial three weeks through June 29, with the government having the option to extend it beyond that date.

On June 11, the European Commission recommended that the Schengen Area states lift internal border restrictions from June 15. However, they deferred a decision as to whether to lift or renew a ban on non-essential travel into the European Union (EU) until June 30.

Significantly, the EC’s recommendation calls for travel restrictions to be based on the actual Covid-19 health situation of individual countries. This would suggest that the EU may exclude countries with the highest infection rates in a move that could discourage, for example, the U.S. government from lifting its existing travel restrictions covering European travelers.