How tourists turned to private jets as 160,000 joined scramble to get home from France
When thousands of British tourists decided to head to France for a relaxing post lockdown holiday, they were not expecting to all have to leave at once.
Such was the scramble to get back across the Channel that private jet companies reported a trebling in requests - including, one firm claimed, from teachers worried about being stuck in quarantine for the start of the new term.
Brides-to-be, families and students made up some of the 160,000 tourists that were forced to attempt to make a hasty dash over the border.
And even for those not hiring their own jets, it proved expensive after the demand for flights, trains and Eurotunnel tickets soared as Britons went to desperate lengths to get home before the new measures came into place.
The news forced Kate, an events organiser from Croydon, south London, to cancel her wedding in Marseille, where she was due to get married on September 12, because the restrictions have made it impossible for friends and family in the UK to fly over to France.
"I am absolutely gutted,” she told the Telegraph in London Gatwick airport, where she arrived this afternoon after making a last-minute dash for the UK to avoid quarantine. “I had my meltdown last night [after the travel restrictions were announced].
"For us it is not just about the money we have paid, but all of our guests have hotels that won't be refunded now."
Those who travelled back to the UK by water faced a race against time. The ferry operator Stena Line was desperately trying to get confirmation from the Border Force and the Foreign Office that its passengers would be exempt from quarantine.
The boat is meant to leave at 10pm from Hook of Holland in Rotterdam to Harwich, where it was due to arrive at 6.30am tomorrow morning. However, the ferry is due to be in UK waters by 4am, the time the quarantine rule entered into force.
Thousands of others made the unexpected journey back to the UK via the Eurostar, which sold out of capacity on its last three trains on Friday a matter of hours after the Government’s announcement.
Stuart and Anna Buntine, a couple who own a farm in the Midlands, spent nearly £1,000 to make it home via the Eurostar from France to London’s St Pancras Station.
Mr Buntine, 58, said: "We didn't get our notification until this morning, where we were staying in Burgundy there wasn't a lot of internet.
"I went to bed last night thinking it was all okay, woke up at 7am to find we had to get back here pretty sharpish.
"We couldn't get tickets, all the sites had crashed. “We had to buy business class tickets back today so it cost nearly £1,000.”
Ashley Bateson, 54, Katarina Bateson, 52, from south west London, also arrived in France on Thursday just hours before the Government announced it would be added to the coronavirus red-list. The couple, who were meant to return from Paris on Monday, described efforts to purchase last-minute tickets online as “mayhem”.
Those who chose to fly were faced with price increases of up to 1000 per cent.
Private jet provider PrivateFly reported three times the number of enquiries and bookings for flights out of France and other countries including the Netherlands that were added to the UK’s quarantine list on Saturday.
Its chief executive Adam Twidell said that the increase in demand was “instant”, and that new and existing customers wanted to change their flight plans as soon as the announcement was made.
“A typical emergency flight might be for a footballer who has missed the airline and needs to get to training, but now we’re seeing the same inquiries from teachers realising they need to get back in a week’s time to start school, and headmasters are not going to appreciate if they’re stuck in quarantine,” he said.
Mark Barnes, a preparatory school teacher from Isleworth, west London was holidaying with his wife and two young children, aged six and eight, in Dijon, France, but bagged a seat on a flight back from Paris so he can go back to work on August 26.
"I have got to get back to school. I would have to isolate for 14 days if I left it any later which would be a pain,” Mr Barnes, 51, said after arriving into London Gatwick.
Ben Hillman, 42, who presents the TV show A Place in the Sun on Channel 4, was forced to cancel a two week road trip across France with his wife Gabby, 40, and their two daughters Honor, four, and Hope, five.
"We don't have the luxury of going on the holiday as the girls start school two days after we were due to get back,” he said. “For our youngest, Honor, it is going to be her first year of school and that settling week is so important for her."
