Travel bosses called on the government on Wednesday to reopen the sector and provide tailored financial support.
It aims to persuade ministers to expand the green list and remove testing and quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated travellers returning from green and amber locations.
An estimated 195,000 travel jobs have been lost during the pandemic or are at risk, according to industry body ABTA.
800 people, including travel agents, pilots and cabin crew, were expected to gather outside the Palace of Westminster yesterday.
Some 200 met at an event in Holyrood, Edinburgh, 100 assembled in Belfast, and a virtual meeting took place for campaigners in Wales.
“The government has to decide if this summer will make or break the UK travel industry,” said Brian Strutton, acting General Secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA).
“Pilots are meeting politicians across the UK to urge them to put pressure on the government to act now and save not only the summer but the future of UK aviation and travel.”
Strutton also said that direct state support to airlines and airports would help save jobs and companies as they head into the European winter, traditionally the off-peak travel season for Britons.
Tim Alderslade, the chief executive of Airlines UK, said: “It is now or never for the Government to reopen travel and save what is remaining of the summer season, not just for families desperate to get away but the tens of thousands of jobs which rely upon this once thriving sector.”
British government ministers are examining ways to re-open travel more broadly, and are considering plans to ditch quarantine requirements for vaccinated adults and their children to some destinations. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that whatever happens, it will be a difficult year for travel.
Under the current “traffic light” system, only travellers to a small number of green-list countries can avoid quarantine. Popular European holiday destinations for Britons, including Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Cyprus and Greece, are currently rated “amber” and require returning passengers to take three expensive Covid-19 tests and isolate for 10 days on return.
BALPA urged the government to expand the green list when the system is reviewed on Thursday, but reports say that little change is expected, whilst some also indicated that politics is interfering with adding more countries to the green-list.
The classifications are based on epidemiological issues.
Malta appears to have the best chance of being added to the green list. Almost 80 per cent of the population has now received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and it recorded just two infections per 100,000 people over the last seven days, according to data published on 20 June.
New variant ‘Delta plus’ found in UK
Meanwhile, 41 cases of a new Covid variant, that’s being labelled ‘Delta plus’ in India, have been sequenced in the UK.
The new strain of the Delta variant is a big concern for India’s government and scientific community after 22 samples were discovered – and now it has emerged there have been 41 cases picked up in the UK.
Public Health England’s latest report on variants confirms 41 of the 75,953 Delta cases sequenced in the UK have been this K417N or B.1.617.2, Delta plus mutation.
Health officials in India believe the strain is more transmissible than the prevalent Delta mutation. Scientists have warned that Delta plus has three worrying characteristics; increased transmissibility, stronger binding in receptors of lung cells and potential reduction in monoclonal antibody response.
Experts have repeatedly said that the virus will mutate constantly over time, with some variants posing a risk, as they could escape the immune system.
Public Health England (PHE) has said two doses of both the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are effective against the Delta variant – but more data would be needed on a further mutation.
PHE and the government are monitoring the new variant, Downing Street has said.
