The government will remove the remaining COVID-19 international travel restrictions for all passengers from 4am Friday 18 March, meaning that travellers would no longer be obliged to fill in the Passenger Locator Form (PLF) or present a negative result of the Coronavirus test upon their arrival in Britain.

In addition, all persons who have not completed their immunisation process against the virus will also be exempted from the pre-departure test as well as day two post-arrival test.

British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and Heathrow Airport, will all be dropping the requirement to wear face masks as of Wednesday, March 16, 2022. At least at British Airways it’s expected that staff will continue to wear masks, while it hasn’t yet been revealed what the policy will be at Virgin Atlantic and Heathrow Airport.

From March 16, 2022, those traveling through Britain’s largest airport will no longer have to wear a face covering in the terminals and public transport stations of LHR. British Airways said from March 16, passengers will only be required to wear a face mask on board flights if the destination requires it.

• Some destinations have transportation mask mandates on the ground, meaning that travelers will need to wear masks when they arrive in or depart from another country.
• Some destinations require travelers to wear masks for the entirety of the flight; for example, the current US transportation mask mandate requires this through April 18, 2022, so masks will still be required on flights to & from the United States.

The UK no longer has any sort of a mask mandate for transportation, so we’ve seen some smaller airlines, like Jet2, drop the requirement to wear a face mask while flying. However, we haven’t yet seen a global airline do this yet, so British Airways will be the first.

Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways all said masks would still be available to those who wanted to continue wearing them and urged travelers to respect each other’s choices.