UK airports say travellers must wear gloves and masks from today

Passengers travelling through Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports are being ordered to cover their faces and wear gloves.

The airports are believed to be the first in the UK to implement such stringent hygiene rules. Passengers are encouraged to bring their own gloves and face coverings or masks, but they will be provided in the early stages of the trial.

All airport staff serving passengers will wear gloves and face masks. The airports will also conduct temperature screening trials over the next few weeks, and are considering requiring passengers to make a health declaration before they are allowed to enter.

Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which owns the three airports, said the measures are designed to ‘demonstrate one way in which air travel can be made safe’.

MAG chief executive Charlie Cornish said: ‘It’s clear that social distancing will not work on any form of public transport. But we’re confident that when the time is right, people will be able to travel safely.

‘MAG has been working with the rest of the airport industry on a new safety framework for travel.

‘We now need to work urgently with Government to agree how we operate in the future. This has to be a top priority so that people can be confident about flying, and to get tourism and travel going again.

‘At MAG we’ve taken expert medical advice on how people can travel safely, and we’re pleased to be piloting these new measures at our airports for those passengers who do still need to travel.

‘We expect to be able to agree a new framework by the end of May that will support a restart of the industry as soon as possible.’

It comes as Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, announced it will also start checking the temperature of passengers in a bid to encourage people to start flying again.

The screening measure was deployed by many other major airports around the world weeks ago, with the aim to reduce the risk of passengers contracting or transmitting Covid-19 while travelling.

The first trial will be launched in the next two weeks and will involve using cameras which are capable of monitoring people’s temperatures.

Cameras will initially be used in the airport’s immigration halls but could be deployed in areas for departures, connections and airport staff searches.

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