UK Red List - Turkey / UAE?
 

Hi folks,

I wonder if anyone has any inside info on whether Turkey or UAE are likely to become Amber - thanks!

Not a clue. If you look at the data they shouldn't be where they are, and the logic "they're a transport hub, therefore they must be red" kind of fails when you realise that - at least for the UAE - there are bans on flying from areas with high rates of Covid.

But to my mind this is about politics in my opinion.

By all accounts these decisions are made at the last minute by a few ministers and their aides shouting at each other for half an hour, so I doubt even those genuinely on the inside could tell you.

How does the political angle work?

Last year it was the backlash against the influencers; this year.. who knows.

Protecting UK airlines from competitive fares offered by their ME counterparts?

What about South Africa? Cases are falling rapidly, and Delta is as much a UK issue.

With all due respect I think we can discount that. In the 10+ years I worked in the industry I've never seen the UK government acting in a protectionist way towards the industry. This is good, on one side, because it allows some great access to the worldwide markets by insisting for open skies everywhere (just look at the amount of routes served by the ME3 in the UK and where EK flies A380s in normal times) but on the other side it's also bad because of things like APD or their, at best, lukewarm approach to capacity expansion in the SE.

Actually, the current administration has probably been the worst on the topic of transportation. The UK is lagging behind everyone else in Europe and the West in terms of aviation recovery and that's impacting the UK airlines more than anyone else. Also in terms of actual money given to the industry, they've been by far the worst.

still a lot of concern about Beta. I honestly (but sadly) think SA will be Red for quite some time.

What I’m struggling to understand is why the vaccine manufacturers seem, at least in public, relaxed about the beta variant.

These lists don't make much sense. Why would Bahrain and Canada with very low case counts and much higher vaccination rates be on the red and yellow list, while Isreal with 2000 cases a day is on the green list? Politics?

Cases and vaccination rates aren't the only criteria to determine whether a country is red/amber/green.

I think ability to test for variants is one of the other criteria.

From what I understand it is supposed to be;

Variants of concern, Active variants, Covid Rates, Numbers Vaccinated, Testing Capability ie Varient Testing and Political Decisions.

I personally don’t see Turkey opening in the Summer, more to do with as much as the numbers have come down, Scientists don’t believe the curve is accurate. It is said Turkey reduced testing, speaking to colleague in Turkey they say it’s bad but vaccinations are up. What’s interesting is Turkey remains on the red list for a lot of Europe so clearly they dont all trust Turkey's stats. It was also a transit route which made it a prime reason for going Red.

The UAE, originally it was bloggers then the transit route for people from South Africa. They have a high rate of vaccination and generally you could say the numbers are low compared to Spain. The concern is of variant’s which is probably aided by the South African and then Indian variant. It was a transit route and the UAE is reliant on Indian / Pakistani / Philippine migrant workers and therefore initially had poor policies. Recently it has had the lot on lockdown and I would assume making an effort with variant testing since they want the Europe market back now. The Asian market was great while Europe was closed, but now its open, it really wants to open. I expect them to go Amber probably October based on Europe fully opening its borders and assuming no new variant’s.

Turkey shot itself in the foot in the early days of the pandemic. They were caught obfuscating statistics by adopting, errrrr, unorthodox definitions of covid cases and covid-related deaths.
I guess that kind of mud sticks.

Could be changes to the red list arrangements for transit passengers. I'd summarise and expand further as per FT rules but it's dissapeared behind a paywall:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-airport-hubs/