Additional flights to meet pent up demand for overseas holidays

Flights to holiday hotspots such as Gran Canaria and Tenerife take off from Doncaster Sheffield Airport once more from today – 4 December 2020.  

Airline operator TUI has added a number of new flights to existing travel corridor destinations such as Canary Islands; Tenerife, Lanzarote and Gran Canaria to assuage passengers’ pent up demand. 

Wizz Air resumes flights to Eastern European destinations such as Riga, Gdansk and Vilnius. It will also add Cyprus to its list of popular holiday locations, which also includes the Canary Islands, from 20 December.  

Chris Harcombe, aviation development director, Doncaster Sheffield Airport, said: “This has been an extremely challenging year for airlines, airports and the aviation industry as a whole as we have seen a reduction of over 80% in passenger traffic.   

“Operators have had to be agile and TUI and Wizz have responded to the easing of lockdown and the introduction of Test and Release by adding extra flights to popular destinations as well as discounts for testing kits, in a move to get passengers back in the air. 

“They have seen a significant spike in bookings following the announcement with many eager to escape to some much-needed sunshine.” 

The additional flights come days after the Government’s changes to its testing strategy, recently outlined by Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, to reduce the current 14-day period of self-isolation to five days, on receipt of a negative COVID-19 test from a private provider. 

Passengers will still be able to travel quarantine-free on return to the UK, to destinations which are on the Government’s Travel Corridor list.  

Doncaster Sheffield Airport’s biggest operators, Wizz Air and TUI have introduced discounted rapid COVID-19 tests for passengers to ease the cost of testing. 

Wizz has partnered with Confirm Testing for its ‘Fit to Fly’ package which includes a PCR swab test and certificate at £85 per person. 

TUI has teamed up with healthcare partner Randox and is offering a discount code for passengers to receive next-day delivery home-testing kits.