To ask how we can stop the flights?

[Quiet31]

If you arrive in lots of countries (China, Poland, Ukraine for example), you are completely checked for CV. You land in Poland, you sit on the plane for as long as it takes - 2, 3, 4 hours - for everyone to be checked twice and questioned. Anyone with anything off is immediately taken to quarantine. The others get on state-provided buses to their homes, then sit alone for 14 days and the police come round to check every couple of hours that they are at home, and for any symptoms.

You fly into Heathrow from New York and waltz off the plane completely unchecked, on to public transport or whatever.

This is SO simple. People on planes are completely controllable. So there should only be repatriation flights. And then controlled quarantine.

Some of our security guards and customer service people and really anyone who wants to get out there and earn could form a war cohort to do this checking and transporting. Of course in proper protective clothing.

BA Pilots have to fly to New York and all over. Then they come back and within 10 days are off somewhere else.

HOW do we bring this to the attention of government so it is swiftly and properly dealt with? The policemen stopping people buying Easter eggs would be better off patrolling these incoming passengers.

Or AIBU?

But the vast majority of these planes are coming from countries with LESS Coronavirus than here.

If we get to the stage that most of our cases are imported rather than local, then yes we should quarantine people. That’s what’s happening in China now. We did quarantine people from high risk areas a month ago, and we should do it again. But right now most transmission is local so YABU

Selfishly I'm hoping that my brother is allowed home.

the vast majority of these planes are coming from countries with LESS Coronavirus

Take a look at the Heathrow arrivals for today ... just Heathrow, never mind all the others - and count the number of flights from Madrid and Barcelona

In China everyone on the plane goes into quarantine and everyone is tested. Your temp is measured twice per day, your travel history is checked and if everything is fine after 14 days you can go home.

Take a look at the Heathrow arrivals for today ... just Heathrow, never mind all the others - and count the number of flights from Madrid and Barcelona

Don't count the flights. Unless you have the pax numbers then it means nothing.

Heathrow is down several hundred movements a day btw

Most them are freight and air traffic is hugely reduced compared to before the crisis, as anyone who has watched sites like Flight Radar in the past will tell you

Australia has only belatedly started taking people from planes and putting them in hotels for 14 days. Prior to that we were allowing people in unrestricted from everywhere including US. Worst of all has been the stuff up around cruise ships which has led to infected people wandering around Sydney.

I agree @Quiet31. At least at some point something like this needs to be brought it. It won’t though. We are too wish washy in the UK

Stopping flights has no effect once the infection is widely seeded. At this stage you are more likely to get coronavirus from another Brit than from someone who got off a flight

I might need to book a flight to one of these countries so I can get tested 😂 (joke by the way!)

The vast majority of passenger airlines fly with freight. There are very few people on them.

A BA pilot I know says even the transatlantic repatriation flights have less than 60 people on them.

Normally I'm woken early each morning by planes flying in to Heathrow (am in a London suburb). It's eerily quiet now, no planes overhead.

So there should only be repatriation flights. And then controlled quarantine.

What about freight?

Most of it is freight right now - necessities such as food and medicine.

Your idea would make the current situation even more difficult.

HOW do we bring this to the attention of government so it is swiftly and properly dealt with?
You're very much an optimist if you think anything about your analysis would be deemed worthy of attention by government OP. They've already decided that airport screening is irrelevant, and they've certainly stopped with the mass quarantining from flights. And they're right, there are far more important things to focus on right now. Very few people flying in, even fewer flying in infectious.

Yesterday 22:58 ShanghaiDiva

In China everyone on the plane goes into quarantine and everyone is tested. Your temp is measured twice per day, your travel history is checked and if everything is fine after 14 days you can go home*

That’s what we should be doing. And UK CITIZENS ONLY (with exemptions on compassionate grounds)

If you look at the flight radar app, there are so few flights above Heathrow, fedex and DHL plus some cargo planes and local flights to Scotland etc.

Good idea squiglet ☺️

Yes sorry all I meant to say excluding freight. Obviously freight needs to continue as well it can.

And twinkle exactly my point - people who live here should be allowed home. But quarantined like so many other countries are doing. As Amelie says.

LongSabbatical there is no reason to be scathing of my thoughts. The virus came here by plane. If we had been checking incoming passengers from the start then we would have been in a much better position in terms of containment. But our own ministers have been in warm meeting rooms, no doubt creating an ideal transmission environment with their sweating, and that is simply the clearest example we could have of their complacency.

It may not seem many that are affected, but the cabin crew on the remaining flights aren't allowed proper protection either. Other countries have a more stringent approach. We also could have. Not expensive, not complicated. Just sensible.

Heathrow are about to increase their cargo by over 50% ad they turn into a hub for receiving med supplies. A considerable amount of this may be flown in ordinary passenger jets. A lot of Heathrow ground staff were sent home last week because of the drastic reduction in fights.

Aer Lingus have been operating flights to China which may look like regular passenger flights but the inside of the aircraft is being filled with supplies. Don't assume a flight is full of passengers.

No not assuming passenger flights and thank goodness there is international Co-operation and help. Just know BA polite and crew who have been taking normal passengers. And even with repatriations, my point isn't the flights - it's the lack of control in exit into the UK.

Why are we not doing this, but are happy to put black dye in a lake to deter people taking their allowed exercise and refreshing actually their souls. the better to survive this?