The course of pressure. Through the course of sunday, hopefully that slips southwards and we replace our easterly winds to a south easterly. It may not feel as bitter but it will feel like winter first thing in the morning without frost. But hopefully that low cloud on the east coast will lift and break to reveal sunshine. More sunshine for north east scotland and Northern Ireland and our weather front is moving away for a time. More sunshine and less wind hopefully equates to it feeling a little bit warmer if you are out. Overnight though, tomorrow night into monday, it turns better again, very little cloud to prevent those temperatures plummeting, widespread frost as we go into monday morning, a sharp frost in the glens of scotland, 6, minus seven celsius. The nights are long at the moment despite having gone through the spring equinox. Frost around, increasing amounts of mist and fog as we lose those winds over the mornings into the start of
the new week but by monday that rain is arriving for the highlands and islands coupled with the strong to gale pulls wind, so a different day here but the vast majority lots of fine, dry weather. More cloud comes on across Northern Ireland and scotla nd on across Northern Ireland and scotland and eventually rain works its way through these parts as well through mid week. Hello this is bbc news. Iam i am lewis byronjones. The headlines louis sabina jones. More beds, ventilators and thousands of extra staff will be made available from next week after a deal between nhs england and the nations independent hospitals. Another 56 people with coronavirus have died in the uk, bringing the total of deaths in the country to 233. The death toll in italy has seen another dramatic rise nearly eight hundred people have died in the last 2a hours from coronavirus the highest total anywhere in the world since the outbreak began. Theres been a dramatic rise in the number of deaths in spain too an increase of more than 300 bringing the total to more than 1300. A senior British Government minister has appealed for people to be responsible when shopping its estimated £1 billion worth of extra food has been stockpiled. Just before our next programme, i
wa nt to just before our next programme, i want to bring you a breaking news line outs of northern italy, the worst affected region and northern italy. Greater restrictions will be introduced there and we are hearing from the regional president that from the regional president that from now on, sport and physical activity in the open air even on your own, it will be bad. Some more restrictions therefore some of the measures include the banning of the use of vending machines and suspending all open air weekly markets and work on building sites. Apart from working on hospitals and roads and railways. Increasingly restrictive measures being introduced in northern italy. In this weeks travel show rajan datar is joined by global guru simon calder to take a look at the impact of cancelled flights and lockdowns around the world. This week on the show our look at the impact the Global Pandemic is having on International Travel. Im stranded. Virgin cancelled my flight yesterday. Were trapped in our hotel for what seems like 15 days. I would love to get home, yeah. What are your rights if youve had trips cancelled . How do you cope if youre stuck in a country in lockdown and just what does the future hold for all our travels . Just a year ago and the headlines from places like paris and venice were very different. We all learned the word overtourism as we saw that cafes and attractions of some of our most loved places heaving with holidaymakers. Its a very different picture now. Many destinations are in lockdown as people are being asked to stay at home to protect their health and that of others. It means that tourists are being left stranded, holidays cancelled and Airline Bosses are predicting a grim future. Its unsettling to see some of the biggest and most popular attractions totally deserted. The taj mahal, eiffel tower, even the popular disney parks in the us all closed. The streets, especially in the european capitals, are looking empty. Paris and madrid have already been on lockdown for most of this week. Its been five days so far lockdown in my own home. The real problem is that we dont know how long are we going to be here. I am one of the lucky ones because i live with my wife so, you know, were together here. I think thats very important. I fear for people who live alone, especially old people. Hola
my mum lives in a different city in spain and shes there all by herself. Shes 75 years old and that worries me. On the positive note, this crisis is bringing out the best in people. Theres somebody we know who is an old woman, 80 years old. And it was her birthday. The neighbours left a little birthday cake with a candle. The old woman opened the doors, saw the cake and everybody, all the neighbours in the courtyard started singing happy birthday to her. Cumpleanos feliz and she was very emotional and it was incredible. Every night, at 8pm, everybody goes out to the balconies and opens the windows
and everybody claps. Clapping. And we give this round of applause for the people working in hospitals, people who are working in the chemists, people who are making, really trying to fight this disease. So thats always a very special and emotional moment. Ive never seen madrid like this. Many governments, including the British Foreign office have warned against non essential travel anywhere in the world. Airlines are struggling, many have grounded up to 90 of their fleets. Research group the centre for aviation says, without a bailout, most of the worlds carriers will be bankrupt by may. Borders are closing, the eu, australia and new zealand are among the countries to stop foreign arrivals. Many cruise ships have ended their tours and flown
all their passengers home. Sporting events the world over have been cancelled, footballs european championships, golfs pga championships and the opening races of the formula i season are all off. One of the most immediate problems is the number of travellers who found themselves stranded abroad miles away from home. Weve been speaking to a number of you caught in that situation. My situation is that im stranded, virgin cancelled my flight yesterday, due to leave at 6 25pm from miami. I was told the day before that of the cancellation. The advice weve been given is quite confusing. I mean, im obviously not a fluent italian speaker so thats partly my fault. But generally, the advice given has changed every few days and varies by region quite a lot. Now is not possible to travel to the neighbouring
islands or to the city unless you have a reason to do so. We also have curfew in place here between 10pm and 5am. We just want to get back to friends and family. I have a new grandson who is going to be six months old tomorrow. I havent seen him for six weeks now. Ive been told that i can book an alternative flight but i dont know if that is with the same provider. Can i go with a Different Airline . Will i be reimbursed for doing that . It is unsettling. Theres so much happening everywhere. It is very easy to get caught up in the panic too when you speak to people. I would love to get home, yeah. Here i am right now in the travel shpw hq in london and im joined by someone who will hopefully be able to untangle some of this and offer some clarity too and that is our global guru, simon calder. Hello, simon. Youve just returned
from the middle east. How wass that journey, where you worried . Were you worried . Pretty much from the off, it started falling apart. My flight from saudi arabia to cairo was cancelled so i eneded up travelling overland through saudi arabia, crossing jordan, israel, which was just about to ban anyone from entering abroad, and across the sinai desert to cairo. Ifound myself coming up against another flight ban which was coming into it effect in a couple of days time. Like many other people, i had little choice but to go straight to cairo airport and see what i could find to get out at any price. I talked to many travellers in the same position, including nikki fernandez. We were supposed to be flying out on saturday the 215t but then we heard first thing this morning from my mum that all flights from thursday onwards were being cancelled so we had to rush to get a flight sooner. Was it a straightforward matter . Did the airline change your flight ok . Absolutely not, we heard nothing from expedia who we booked through or with egypt air
who we are flying with. We had to go through our concierge and we advised to go through the embassy but the British Embassy was not opening their doors despite there being a queue of us and other nationals. They gave us the home office number, we telephoned those but they didnt respond. Our insurance wasnt answering and expedia was not answering either so eventually we had to go straight to the airport to book an earlier flight. Clearly you have done that. How much did it cost . An additional £630 each to switch to get earlier flights. Simon, there are lots of people who are stuck somewhere and many people have lost a lot of money. What is your advice . It is such an unusual situation that at this stage its a question of fly first, ask questions later. There are all kinds of experiences of people where the passenger rights rules should take effect but the airlines are simply ignoring them. They have very little choice they say. The situation is completely out of control. Travel insurance too. Of course, many people are assuming that there problems will be covered
by that but unfortunately, it wont be for possibly weeks or months and when the dust has settled and people actually find out what they can claim back. But its going to leave many people out of pocket and of course, sadly, many great travel professionals out of work. Your advice is to get that flight and get home. Very much so. If you know that the government of the country you are in is banning International Flights in two days time just get online, find a flight, in extremis, go to the airport and see what you can find. Most people, i hope, will be able to get out. Tell me something, what are the most common problems hitting your inbox at the moment . At the moment, the most pressing is im in country x, trying to get home, help, what do i do . All i can say is, assume you wont get any help from your airline, your Insurance Company, or even from your embassy. You have to make decisions now, there is no time to lose. Spend what you need to, get family and friends
to pay for your ticket just get yourself out and then ask question later. Nikki was referring to the fact that she couldnt get through to her own embassy. Is that common . Isnt that worrying . The normal workload of an embassy is maybe a handful of people every week, maybe lost passports, people getting into trouble with the law, a sickness case. Theyre simply not cut out for the situation of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of nationals all being in the same position of having to leave their country at top speed. Im not really surprised this is happening. The systems we have in place simply never were designed for the worst emergency that has ever happened to travel. For the moment, simon, thank you very much indeed. Still to come a closer look at what this could mean for airlines as some ground their entire international fleets. And, with many people still stuck abroad and others
waiting for compensation, we put some fire questions to our global guru. If youre a regular viewer, you will know that we have a little travel show family who live and work all over the planet. And like many other people, they have been facing a complicated International Travel situation not to mention the various stages of lockdown, isolation and worry. So we thought it would be a good idea to catch up with them to see how theyve been getting on. Hey, its mike and i am at the airport in cairo where it seems like its business as usual for the most part. Just more masks and gloves. I fully expected to change when i get to heathrow i fully expect it to change when i get to heathrow and toronto Pearson Airport where ive heard things are crazy. My story didnt start here in cairo. It started in yemen. An island called socotra off the yemen coast which is kind
of like the galapagos of the indian ocean. A dream trip id planned for months and id just gotten there and was three days in and i gota knock on my tent at three or liam, saying that there is one flight off the islands and there will be no more indefinitely and you should probably be on it. Hi, its carmen here in tokyo where i feel its a lot calmer than what im seeing elsewhere in the world. I guess japan had one of the first few cases of the coronavirus. So weve been living with these measures for quite some time. The panic buying seems to have stopped. There is a little bit of social distancing but i dont feel there really is because im at the park and as you can see behind me, its pretty busy. As a traveljournalist, im meant to be right now preparing for my trip to chile and south america, and of course thats not going to happen because the bbc, like most other companies, have cancelled all non essential travel. This is christa in hertfordshire at home. I was supposed to be in rome last week and next week i was supposed to be in thailand but both have been cancelled. The other reason im at home is a few days ago, i started to get a few symptoms, a cough and though im almost certain it was nothing to do with the coronavirus, i self quarantined. Im on day five currently and who knows how many more will need to come. Im just really hoping this can be resolved as soon as possible so we can get out there on the road and travel the world, which is what we love doing. Thats how the Current Crisis is affecting members of the travel show team, but of course, the impact is far wider than that. With hotels, cruise liners, and restaurants all facing an uncertain future. And perhaps, when it comes to lost revenue, the biggest impact will be felt by the Airline Industry. Its estimated one in ten jobs worldwide are dependent on tourism. In many places, especially in the developing world, its now in the top two or three industries. Tens, if not hundreds of millions depend on it for their livelihood. Many of these people now face unemployment. Airline bosses say the impact is comparable to the 2008 Global Financial crisis, the sars outbreak and 9 11. But its widely accepted this is far worse and the effect will be long term. We propose for a temporary restriction on the eu. A travel ban will be placed on all nonresidents, non australian citizens coming to australia. We will be suspending all travel in europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The boss of British Airways has described the situation as a crisis
of global proportions, like no other we have known. And joining me now is paul charles, an aviation analyst and Communications Expert who has worked in the Airline Industry for 20 years or so, you forjoining us. Thank you forjoining us. As an expert you have helped airlines steer through crises before. But in terms of scale, how would you compare this Current Situation with those . This is seismic, and airlines are on their knees. They have never faced anything on this scale and several of them are on a cliff edge anyway because of the position they were in before the coronavirus outbreak occurred. So there is no precedent to this . It is unparalleled . The ash cloud, financial crisis, sars, mers, were all much smaller scale and some of them were regional not global and the issue here is that we are dealing with a Global Crisis and that is why airlines are cutting up to 90 of their capacity,
running threadbare operations in most cases and they are not sure they will never get back to where they were at the start of 2020. We may be at that moment where government is clearly stretched and do not have all the resources in the world, they will have to say we do need to pick and choose in this industry. Is it better to save one Major Airline in the country and to save a sector rather than let the whole sector go under . I think they are looking at airlines and saying maybe some do have to fail, notjust in the uk nor in europe but globally. And that will be a very testing period for some airline executives. How do you think airlines will respond to passenger worries . Airline Customer Service teams have never been under so much pressure. This is unprecedented. Understandably they are struggling to cope. The best advice really is to not contact your airline until three days before you are due to travel
if you have a booking already. There is no point clogging up the phone line or their e mail by contacting them now if you are booked to fly in six months time. They probably do not have answers and you do not need an answer at this stage, you can wait a little longer. But if you are flying within 72 hours you should try to contact them and that is where you prioritise. Airlines themselves are saying please dont talk to us until 72 hours before the flight. We will get through the enquiries but it will take time. We will get through this and we have an inherent desire to travel, it is in our dna. The virus will not kill that off. We will want to travel again and the industry will recover. Returning now to more of your stories of being stuck abroad. We had a number of you get in touch from peru after the borders closed on monday. The situation in cusco is that the borders have been shut down over a very short period
of time so we were not even given any warning and everything was cancelled. Were just trapped in a hotel for what seems like 15 days, it could be longer. I am in lockdown so the only reason i am allowed out is to go to the shop to get food or to go to a chemist. Otherwise i am to stay inside and i will be stuck here for a while. Our biggest concern is the lack of help from the British Government. All the embassies in peru have closed down due to virus spread. I am feeling frustrated at the lack of information and, actually, even responses on twitter from different people, we get robot responses every time. Talk to your travel company, no matter what has been asked. We are trying to remain positive. We were lucky enough to secure an air b8b for the two weeks
that the country is supposed to be shutdown, until april one. The advice i would give to any traveller stuck overseas right now is probably to get on twitter and see if there are other people in a similar situation because i found that banding together with people in the same situation in the same country, even in the same city has been really, really good and really supportive. We have shared advice and almost come together as a force. You are a stronger voice if you can get together than if you are on your own. Just some of the people who contacted us after finding themselves stranded a long way from home because of the Current Crisis. Im joined now by our global through simon calder who can hopefully offer advice. People say they have trouble getting through to their airlines and one person said they were on hold for three hours. What would your advice be if you cannot get in touch with your carrier . Paul charles was saying a moment ago that Many Airlines are overwhelmed. They certainly are. If you have given it your best shot and could not get an answer in a reasonable time then you need to make your best decisions and spend whatever you need to, keep receipts and make a reasonable claim afterwards. And, by the way, in many cases airlines are saying just accept a voucher for future travel online. If your flight is actually cancelled, which is happening a lot, you are entitled to a cash refund and a voucher might not do you any good. Hold out for real money. Mick tweeted us saying he had a holiday to venice booked to leave two weeks ago. Uk government advice was to not travel to northern italy so why have my Insurance Company rejected the claim . How are Insurance Companies responding to the situation and what is your advice in this situation . Like everybody else, travel insurers are in uncharted territory. They are understaffed and their finances are under tremendous pressure, so it does not surprise me that mick has been refused. In his case he can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service in the uk who, if he thinks he has a valid claim, will make the insurer pay it. The travel show has viewers around the world and there will be local laws which may or may not offer some help. All i can say is that the Insurance Industry is not going to be in a hurry to pay people out because this will cost it millions. A tweet here from a viewer in the uk that after a six nations match was cancelled in paris he got a full refund from the hotel but the Train Company charged him £70 to change his rail ticket and offered no refund. What would your advice to him be . We heard from so many sports fans who had been planning trips based on a particular event which is then being cancelled and they are saying what do we do . I am afraid in his case and in many others, the Train Company is perfectly able to take him to paris and back. But the fact that he does not
want to go is not their problem. They are applying terms and conditions as they are entitled to. So at least be glad you got the refund on the hotel. Finally, a tweet from anthonyjohnson who told us i just ended a trip in southern argentina. It took four days and four flights to finally get home. I would like to send my appreciation to all Airline Staff still working across the world. Without them i would never have gotten home. It is a great story and all the way through at a time when the industry of Human Happiness has neverfelt so miserable and there has been so much despair, people who sadly know theirjobs are on the line are still delivering absolutely top class professional safe service to get people where they need to be. A positive note for ending on in a negative situation. Thank you forjoining us, simon. We have had to cancel or postpone many of our travel plans which means that the travel show will be looking a little different for
the time being at least. However, fingers crossed we will send you on the road again we will be you on the road again doing what we love doing, making programmes that hopefully you enjoy. From me and the rest of the travel show team, wherever they are in the world right now, it is goodbye. Good evening. If you have been following the Weather Forecast for the last few days you would know we have been talking about a lot of dry weather over the weekend. And that certainly is true and has been true today and it will continue tomorrow with High Pressure around. In fact, for many this week but for the northwest in particular some very
wet and windy weather. The gales is due in for the start of the new week and we could have as much as three to four inches of rain. But elsewhere, for most of us, this should be dry weather with plenty of sunshine but we will pay with some frosty nights and hopefully however we will lose the chilly wind in the next 2a hours. Thats been quite keen today, limiting our temperatures in the east coast, and the north sea is at its coldest this time of the year. The result will probably pick up some parts of england and scotland and we still have our weekend weather front passing close by to the western northern isles, perhaps giving as a little bit a drizzly rain here and preventing a frost but for most, it is a cold night. A widely frosty night, 5, 6 in scotland. Under that ridge of High Pressure. Through the course of sunday, hopefully that slips a little bit further southwards we were pleased that
easterly wind and gradually for a southeasterly. So it may not feel quite great out and about to be caught in that wind, but what it will feel like winter first thing the morning with that frost. Hopefully that low cloud will lift and break through the day to reveal sunshine. More sunshine for scotland hopefully then today and Northern Ireland. Our weather front is moving away for a time. More sunshine and slightly less when hopefully a equates with feeling warmer if you are out. Overnight, into monday, it turns bitter again. Very little cloud to prevent the temperatures from plummeting in a widespread frost. Again it will be a sharp frost in the glens of scotland and 6 and minus seven celsius. The nights are still quite low. Despite having gone through the spring equinox. A little bit of frost around. Possibly increasing amounts of mist and fog as well as we lose those winds. But by monday, you can see the rain arriving for the highlands and the island. Coupled with the strong gale force winds. A very different day here but for the vast majority, a lot of fine and dry weather and we will see more cloud coming in across Northern Ireland
and scotland and eventually some rain working its way to east parts by midweek. This is bbc news, im Lewis Vaughan jones. The headlines the death toll in italy has seen another dramatic rise. Nearly 800 people have died in the last 2a hours from coronavirus the highest total anywhere in the world since the outbreak began. Nobody was prepared for a tragedy of this magnitude. And in spain, theres been a big rise too an increase of more than 300 people, bringing the total number of deaths there to more than 1,300. In the uk, more beds, ventilators and thousands of extra staff will be made available from next week after a deal between nhs england and the nations independent hospitals. Thats as the death toll in the uk
climbed to 56 people, bringing the total number of people who died after contracting