Planes are busy as passengers fly home

While Guernsey Airport car park was empty, the planes were busy.

The EU has now closed its external borders for 30 days and, from today, people arriving in the island from outside the Bailiwick will need to self-isolate for 14 days.

Outgoing flights were relatively quiet at lunchtime.

One female traveller said her friends had been working in Sark, but after hearing Stocks was postponing its spring opening, they had decided to try and get home to Romania.

‘We were not sure how long the airport was going to be open for flights,’ she said.

‘It will be a relief to get home.’

A male traveller, also heading to Gatwick, had been working in Guernsey for the last three days and had family in the island. But hearing about the upcoming changes encouraged him to get an earlier flight out.

‘I have family here, so it was a hard choice [about where to be],’ he said.

‘I just want to make sure I get home to Maidstone.’

Inbound flights are busier, as islanders hurried home. They were not required to self-isolate unless they had come from certain countries or were showing symptoms.

Fergus Roche, 23, has been working at a ski resort in Canada for several years. But it has been shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak.

‘I’ve had no sleep because I have been flying for 27 hours,’ he said, as he finally left the airport.

‘I wanted to come home to my family and have a bit of home comfort.’

One woman was travelling from London to stay with her family. She plans to remote work during the crisis.

‘I was not sure what to pack, because I didn’t know how long I would be staying,’ she said.

James Cottam, 23, is studying at UCL. But all the students were allowed to leave early and do distance learning due to the outbreak.

He tried to bring as much home as he could, as he did not know how long the visit would be.

‘If I had stayed in London, I would have been in student accommodation, where ten of us share a kitchen, so it did not make sense to stay,’ he said.

‘If you are going to be stuck anywhere, better to be stuck at home.’