Airline easyJet has announced it will be resuming its flights to the island from next month.

The airline suspended all routes in the British Isles at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in mid-March, including to the island.

On March 27, the island’s borders closed, leaving only key workers, patients requiring treatment in the UK and returning residents who come via Heysham able to travel to the island.

Chief Minister Howard Quayle said: ’We will not be relaxing our border controls because easyJet has decided to start their internal flights again.’ However, easyJet confirmed that it intends to run flights to and from the Isle of Man from June 15.

It is understood that the airline continues to be in discussions with Manx authorities over travel restrictions and that it intends to resume services on the Gatwick and Liverpool routes with three flights a week on each.

As the Courier went to press yesterday, the easyJet website was showing its old schedule.

As part of its plans, easyJet is introducing new measures to help ensure safety and wellbeing including enhanced aircraft cleaning and disinfection and the requirement for passengers and crew to wear masks.

All passengers and crew will be required to wear masks onboard at all times. Initially when flights restart, the Bistro and Boutique service will not be available.

Furthermore, all flights will be equipped with spare sanitary equipment including masks, gloves and hand sanitiser to ensure these are available to customers and crew at all times onboard, if required.

Chief executive Johan Lundgren said: ’I am really pleased that we will be returning to some flying in the middle of June. These are small and carefully planned steps that we are taking to resume operations.

’We will continue to closely monitor the situation across Europe so that when more restrictions are lifted the schedule will continue to build over time to match demand while also ensuring we are operating efficiently and on routes that our customers want to fly.

’The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew remains our highest priority which is why we are implementing a number of measures enhancing safety at each part of the journey from disinfecting the aircraft to requiring customers and crew to wear masks.

’These measures will remain in place for as long as is needed to ensure customers and crew are able to fly safely as the world continues to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.’