Thousands of people look set to disregard advice not to fly home to Ireland over the Christmas period, despite dire warnings at the weekend that international travel in the weeks ahead will be a "recipe for disaster".
Airlines have dramatically curtailed the number of flights scheduled to arrive in Ireland between now and the end of the year due to the Covid-19 crisis, but there are some signs of demand picking up ahead of what is typically one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
With Christmas Day just under six weeks away, more than 1,300 seats have already been pre-booked with Ryanair and Aer Lingus on just two routes from London airports in the days before December 25th.
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As of Sunday afternoon, 684 passengers had paid for pre-booked seats on Aer Lingus planes coming from London Heathrow to Dublin between December 19th and Christmas Eve.
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While there was still availability on most of its flights over the period, with prices one-way ranging from less than €100 to over €200, one flight on December 20th only had premium seats available, with tickets costing in excess of €500.
Meanwhile, 536 people had pre-booked seats on Ryanair flights over the five days leading up Christmas, with one-way fares ranging from about €40 to close to €100.
Pre-booking seats is not a requirement for either Aer Lingus or Ryanair flights, so the number already booked to travel on both routes is likely to be substantially higher than early indications suggest.
Although the routes from the two London airports to Dublin are among the busiest, they still only make up only a small percentage of the arrivals into Irish airports, suggesting the numbers arriving from overseas up to Christmas Eve could be substantial.
They will not, however, be anything close to the figures recorded last year, when almost 1.2 million people arrived and departed from Dublin Airport over the festive period. December 20th last, a Friday, was the busiest pre-Christmas day, with more than 90,000 passengers coming and going through both terminals.
‘Weaker than usual’ bookings
A Ryanair spokeswoman said the airline was operating just 40 per cent of its normal winter schedule this year. She said that forward bookings into December “are weaker than usual” because of the lockdowns in Ireland and the UK.
She said Ryanair anticipates that “lots of people will still travel home for Christmas, both to Ireland and from Ireland, and they will do so taking advantage of the EU ‘Traffic Light’ Scheme rules, which allows people to obtain a negative Covid test within 72 hours of their date of departure, and then not have to quarantine after arrival”.
An Aer Lingus spokeswoman said while the airline was operating a “much-reduced schedule”, some “additional capacity has been added on some key routes such as Dublin-London Heathrow over the Christmas period”.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One, public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally said he did not believe Christmas travel would be "worth the trouble if people play it properly and isolate properly for two weeks in advance...that's not much of a Christmas.
“So I really don’t think travel should be on the agenda this Christmas and I hope people stick to that because we know this virus travels very well, and having people flowing in and out of countries and through airports and all the other travel that it involves is a recipe for disaster,” Dr Scally added.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has also urged those living overseas not to travel home for Christmas, ruling it out even on compassionate grounds, while Tánaiste Leo Varadkar advised people not to book flights "at the moment" due to the pandemic-driven uncertainty.
