Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary has blasted the British government for mismanaging the Covid-19 crisis, and hit out at fresh measures for quarantining travelers coming from abroad.
“It’s idiotic and it’s unimplementable. You don’t have enough police in the UK,” O’Leary told BBC radio.
“This [is] the same government that has… mismanaged the crisis for many weeks.
Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that all travellers arriving in Britain will be quarantined for 14 days. The measure is expected to take effect in the end of the month.
O’Leary had previously criticized the idea of quarantine on arrival as “unenforceable.”
“I think people will largely ignore it, which is not good,” he told the media last week, adding that he believes that the measures will “disappear pretty quickly.”
In early May, Ryanair announced plans to reduce salaries and cut 3,000 jobs, representing around 15 percent of its workforce, as the airliner tries to cope with the loss of passenger traffic amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said that it will operate less than one percent of its scheduled flights to the end of June.
Earlier this month, Johnson unveiled a roadmap for easing quarantine restrictions, expressing hope that some businesses could resume work by July 1. A five-level ‘Covid Alert System’ was introduced to inform citizens about the varying degrees of restrictions in different areas.
Johnson’s roadmap has drawn criticism from the opposition. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon slammed the government’s messaging as “vague and imprecise,” arguing that replacing the previous ‘stay at home’ advice with the slogan ‘stay alert’ will have a “catastrophic” outcome.
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