Why are flights still coming into the country?

[Ledkr]

Pil were stuck in NZ and flew home monday. They swanned through with no temperature checks or anything and said the airport was as busy as ever with arrivals. They can't all be repatriation flights surely?
I don't get this at all. Is this happening in other countries?

To bring in freight.

I don't believe the airport was as busy as usual. About 90% of flights are grounded!

Idk either. I feel a bit head in handsy about inward passenger flights.

Cargo I understand. Paasengers, nope.

I live under one of the routes into Heathrow. I have seen one plane in the last week....we noticed because it's eerily quiet here.

There is absolutely no way that airport arrivals is as busy as normal.

No, there scheduled passenger flights coming in, it's not all freight.

They should have stopped the flights from the badly infected places when it all started, but no, we had flight after flight from Wuhan.

Almost all flights are grounded, and there is absolutely no point in wasting resources on checks when you come in to the country - it's already spreading through communities. Plus it takes so long for symptoms to show that all it would do is give some people a false sense of security.

I live next to an airport and it is virtually standstill. I can’t see or hear hardly any. The car parks are also completely empty

Look at the arrivals at Heathrow.

New York, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, all of them just landed.

How full was their plane?
Dh was on a flight two weeks ago (not to uk) and it had about 40 passengers.
Find it hard to believe any airport is as busy as usual.

This is HK airport two weeks ago, middle of the day.

We came back two weeks ago, so we were jolly glad that flights were still running, we didn't want to be stuck abroad indefinitely. Or plane was about 2/5th full. The plane set off early, they told us that now they had loaded all the cargo, we could go.

To repatriate Brits who are stuck abroad

Heathrow still has flights coming in and out, although a fraction of their normal traffic
Gatwick is closed.
There are a lot of freight movements but still some passenger flights as well
Look on Flight Radar.

there is absolutely no point in wasting resources on checks when you come in to the country - it's already spreading through communities.

Of course there’s a point - the country is meant to be in lockdown! Everyone getting off a flight should be quarantined for 14 days before being allowed in a taxi or on public transport. Otherwise they’re just spreading the disease.

Potentially spreading the disease. You won't spread if it you hadn't caught it. We were the only couple on the airport bus back to the car park, so no problem there about distancing ourselves!

@Dongdingdong We are one of the worst hit countries with drastically rising numbers and a very soft lockdown - they're at more risk of catching the disease when they land than before they took off (depending, of course, on where they're coming from).

With no testing and an incubation period of 14 days, how do you know you don’t have it?
You don’t.
Hence quarantine procedures in many countries eg NZ, HK, China

Potentially spreading the disease. You won't spread if it you hadn't caught it.

But we have no idea whether people coming in on flights have caught it or not - that’s the problem.

The argument that it’s already spreading through communities doesn’t make sense - if we all went by that logic then why bother with lockdown at all? I don’t see why people coming in on flights get some sort of special pass to wander through an airport and onto public transport when the rest of us (quite rightly) have to stay home.

Those early repatriation flights from Wuhan have a lot to answer for too.

all The passengers on the Wuhan repatriation flights went into quarantine.

There were flights from all over China that were not only repatriation flight, also from Wuhan in the early stages.

There was no quarantine back then.

I find it bizarre that they are still repatriating people. If it goes on for another 6+ weeks, they’ll still be repatriating when we relax the lockdown?

I think it's too late to worry about someone getting off a flight. The virus has spread throughout the U.K. and people coming in have as much chance of catching as they do spreading it now. Stopping people coming in from other countries would only have worked in the very early days as a preventative. They have as much chance of catching it from the taxi driver as he does from them now.

Virgin operating flights Hong Kong LA New York. My neighbor was on one it was packed no social distancing no changes to the time crew were in the cabin business as usual no checks coming in from Jfk which is alarming given the cases in New York

Which airport is busy as usual?

Flight radar shows theres a lot less flights than 6 weeks ago.