BA shuns Priti Patel meeting over quarantine plans

A row has broken out between Priti Patel and BA over the plans to quarantine travellers for 14 days as the airline refused to meet her, and a government source branded the company “not serious about getting Britain working again”. Tensions between the government and the airline escalated on Thursday, as Alex Cruz, the chief executive of BA, declined to join an industry call with Patel, the home secretary, and Kelly Tolhurst, the aviation minister. Conservative MPs are up in arms about the quarantine proposals, arguing they will harm airlines and dash people’s hopes of summer holidays, but Boris Johnson insisted this week that the policy will go ahead from Monday as an essential way of stopping new outbreaks of coronavirus. Earlier on Thursday, Cruz had warned employees that BA’s parent company was haemorrhaging cash and accused the government of dealing “another blow” by pressing ahead with the plan to quarantine inbound travellers for 14 days at a time when many other countries are lifting such measures. Airports, aviation bodies and almost every other major airline apart from Ryanair were on the call with Patel. A source said the industry made the case for the quarantine rules to be in place for three weeks only until the first review date on 29 June. A source close to the talks said that BA’s team had advised Cruz that it “wasn’t worth his time engaging”.<br/>