The arrival of US President Joe Biden onto the picturesque Cornish soil of Corbis Bay, St Ives, bodes well for the much-awaited creation of a transatlantic bubble between the UK and US.
This is Biden’s first overseas visit since becoming US president in January and his mission is to open up what must be the most valuable and important travel market in the world.
He and UK PM Boris Johnson have agreed to establish a task force amid the gathering of Group of Seven nations – the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – to find ways to get people flying again.
UK Trade Minister Greg Hands said the reopening should be a matter of priority:
“Every day a million people in this country go to work for US companies. In the United States, more than a million people go to work for British companies. It is very important that we get that transatlantic relationship reset up in terms of travel between the two countries.
“This is one of the agreements that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden will be launching, we’ll be looking at how we can reopen transatlantic travel,”
At this time there is no particular timescale other than an agreement to report on the findings of the task force in a month. Hopes are that the two men will find inspiration in the quaint Cornish landscape to find ways to reopen transatlantic travel sooner rather than later and at the very least in time for late summer holidays.
The G7 leaders’ agenda includes finding a unified simplified system to show the Covid-status for international travellers effectively easing cross-border travel.
Former President Donald Trump barred travel from the UK to the US for non-Americans at the start of the pandemic in mid-March 2020 by presidential proclamation; and the US remains on the UK’s amber list, meaning Britons have to self-isolate for 10 days on return to the UK.
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