ARCHIVED - Brits are heading for the Costa Blanca: Alicante-Elche airport expects 5,000 UK passengers this week

Alicante-Elche Airport has 62 flights from the UK scheduled this week with British Airways making its returns to the Costa Blanca runway.

Marking a significant shift in international travel, 5,000 British tourists and residents are forecast to return to Alicante province on the Costa Blanca this week. 

Despite having to quarantine for 10 days on their return to the UK, Brits are already arriving in the Costa Blanca, defying the PM's calls to avoid international travel unless it's absolutely necessary after the government placed Spain on its amber safe traffic list.

Yesterday (Tuesday, May 18), Alicante-Elche Airport had 12 scheduled flights between London, including four with British Airways as the airline made its return to the terminal.

A dozen flights may seem like a drop in the ocean compared to 2019, but only two weeks ago the airport had hardly any connections with the UK at all, aside from a few limited to weekends. 

In May 2019, before Covid struck, Alicante-Elche airport processed 1,402,153 passengers, giving it the fifth highest traffic of any airport in Spain.

In April 2019 it handled 1,341,713 passengers, traffic plummeting down to just 108,382 this April, a fall of 91.9 per cent, so any level of increase will be extremely welcome for the beleagured businesses of the Costa Blanca and Costa Cálida tourism sectors, hoping to see British money starting to flow into their tills once again.

Despite travel restrictions thousands will make their way to the Costa Blanca over the next four days from airports in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Midlands, London, Liverpool and Manchester.

There's also good news this week for the neighbouring Region of Murcia, with Ryanair set to resume UK flights into Corvera airport from Friday.

Sadly, the return of holidaymakers won't help soften the €1 billion blow suffered by hotels as a direct result of the pandemic just yet.

But it's a positive step in the right direction for all those desperate to travel, as is news that the European Union has agreed to reopen its borders to vaccinated non-EU tourists

From as early as June, non-EU travellers could enter Europe provided they can prove they have been fully immunised - received both doses of vaccine - at least 14 days before their trip.

Meanwhile, according to the Spanish Minister of Tourism, the Canary Islands are "on the verge" of recovering the British tourism market.

Yesterday Boris Johnson and his ministerial team made it quite clear that they want Brits to take staycations and remain in the UK amidst fears of the rapid spread of the "Indian variant".

The UK government announced last month that it would introduce a ‘traffic light’ system setting out the restrictions in place for travelling to different countries when international movement re-opened on Monday, May 17.

But Spain is currently on the amber list and the Foreign Office continues to advise against travel to Spain.

At the moment, travellers from the UK are not allowed into Spain unless they are residents or for certain other reasons until at least May 31 after the Spanish government last month extended restrictions on British travellers so the allocation of Spain to the "amber list" makes little difference for the remainder of the month.

But it will affect all those who have booked flights for the first month of June in the expectation that the restrictions of the Spanish government would be removed and had hoped that Spain would be listed as green.

But adding to confusion, at the launch of a new €8 million tourism campaign 'You Deserve Spain' ('Te Mereces España') tourism minister Maroto suggested that from May 20, British holidaymakers will be able to come to Spain "without PCR requirements".

At the moment, nothing has been officially published changing the date until which British tourists can travel to Spain other than for essential reasons, which remains as May 31.

There is so much confusion and rightly so, with contradictory messages coming from all directions.

If you are trying to get to Spain, always check the UK Government travel advice for Spain before pressing that "book" button; the situation is literally changing day by day.