BA parent IAG warned on Thursday it would not restart flying if the UK imposed a 14-day quarantine on passengers arriving in the country. “If there is a 14-day quarantine, I wouldn’t expect us to be doing any flying in that situation, or very little flying,” said Willie Walsh, CE of IAG. He added he could not see “an environment where people will want to fly into the UK if they are forced to quarantine for 14 days”. Grant Shapps, UK transport secretary, is considering quarantine measures for all arrivals into the country once travel restrictions are lifted as part of the government’s phased exit from lockdown. Walsh’s criticism came as IAG said it was hoping to make a “meaningful” return to the skies in July. The airline said it expected passenger capacity to be down by about 50% for the year as a whole, although Walsh said this was dependent on governments alleviating lockdowns and travel restrictions. The carrier also warned that further job cuts would be needed across the group for it to survive the blow inflicted by the disease. IAG predicted it would take three years before passenger demand returned to normal. It said it would defer deliveries of 68 aircraft. IAG revealed it had raised GBP300m from the UK’s Coronavirus Corporate Financing Facility, adding to the E1bn it had accessed from Spain’s Instituto de Crédito Oficial facility to boost its liquidity. Walsh rejected suggestions he had previously said he was opposed to state aid. He said he was happy to access general support schemes that were provided by the government, but added: “I’m opposed to illegal state aid, which typically applies to state aid given to a failed company.”<br/>
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BA plans to resume a large number of flights in July, but Willie Walsh has said the Covid-19 crisis had made a third runway at Heathrow impossible. Walsh, the CE of BA’s parent company IAG, said its airlines, which also include Ireland’s Aer Lingus and Spain’s Iberia and Vueling, intended to operate about 1,000 flights a day between July and September. That represents half of the schedule the airline had expected to fly before the crisis forced it to ground almost all of its flights. The group hopes to run about 70% of its previously planned schedule by the final three months of the year, but Walsh said demand was unlikely to recover to 2019 levels before 2023 at the earliest. Walsh, a longstanding critic of Heathrow’s plans for a third runway, said the crisis had made it impossible to build. “There isn’t going to be a third runway. If they want to build a third runway they have to acquire Waterside, the British Airways headquarters. I’ll sell it to them tomorrow ... but I don’t expect they’ll be rushing to do a deal,” he said. IAG made a E1.7b loss after tax during Q1, compared with a profit of E70m in 2019. The loss included a E1.3b charge as fuel and currency hedges became worthless, and will be followed by “significantly worse” during the current quarter, IAG said. Walsh said there would be further job cuts at IAG’s other airlines, but he suggested they might be less affected than British Airways, which is more reliant on lucrative business customers.<br/>
The CE of Heathrow’s biggest airline customer said the GBP14b third runway project was now “impossible” due to Covid-19, as the airport got the go-ahead to appeal against a court ruling that blocked its expansion plans. Willie Walsh, chief of BA parent company IAG, on Thursday said: “There isn’t going to be a third runway. It was a Herculean task before Covid and I think it’s impossible now in this environment.” While Walsh has in the past supported expansion at Heathrow, he has long been critical of the current scheme, saying he has no confidence in the airport’s management to deliver a new runway cost-effectively. His comments come as Heathrow airport was on Thursday given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court to appeal against an earlier ruling that blocked its plans to build the third runway. The runway plans were thrown into disarray earlier this year when the Court of Appeal concluded that the government had failed to assess the impact of the expansion on international climate change agreements. It ruled that the government’s aviation national policy statement was therefore unlawful. The government left it to Heathrow to make its own legal challenge. The UK’s highest court said it would hear an appeal on this issue but no date has been set for the hearing. <br/>