Flights to Europe offered for as little as £1 as airlines scramble to save summer holidays

British Airways is offering return flights to Europe for just £1 under its loyalty scheme as airlines seek to rescue summer holidays.

The airline, Britain’s biggest, has offered the deals to its executive club members of which there are an estimated 10 million worldwide.

They include popular destinations like Nice, where the slump in demand from the Covid-19 pandemic has led to nearly all flights to the French resort have availability through August.

It has offered 100,000 “reward” seats at reduced rates across its short-haul network, with a number priced at only £1 and up to 18,000 loyalty or Avios points. Vienna, Amsterdam and Nice have the most availability.

Ryanair and EasyJet have also cut prices – with some one-way flights available for under £10.

BA sent its offer to executive club members on Monday after the prospects of a recovery in passenger traffic were hit by the Government reimposing quarantine on Spain on Saturday.

“With over 100,000 reward seats available across our short-haul network, executive club members can pay in Avios and a flat fee in cash while we cover the taxes, fees and carrier charges,” said a BA spokesman.

Ryanair has cut its prices on one-way flights from London Southend to Bilbao to £9.99 for Aug 27; to Pisa to £9.99 on Aug 19; and to Valencia at £9.99 on Aug 22.

It is also offering London Stansted to Biarritz for £14.99 on Aug 25; London Luton to Nimes for £19.02 on Aug 27; Athens for £14.99 on Aug 18; Bologna £19.99 on Aug 17; and Alicante at £15 on Aug 19.

EasyJet is offering London Gatwick to Alicante at £35.99 on Aug 10; to Barcelona at £28.99 on Aug 18; to Madrid at £26.99 on Aug 17; to Bordeaux at £40.99 on Aug 16; to Crete at £30.99 on Aug 23; and to Faro, Portugal, at £26.99, on Aug 11.

David Skillicorn, commercial director of Prestige Holidays, said such price-cutting was necessary to rebuild confidence. “It is in the airline’s interest to fill these planes, get them moving, get people to come back and be interviewed at Gatwick or Manchester and asked, ‘How did you get on? What was the flight like? Did you mind wearing a mask?’” he said.

“They’ll go, ‘No, I didn’t mind wearing a mask, it was great, I feel well, I had two weeks in the sun’ ... in the hope that this will encourage other people to go, ‘Perhaps this is the new normal.’”

“It hurts the airlines desperately, but then, so does a pile of empty seats hurt them desperately.”

“It is completely about building up confidence in their customers. They don’t want to be selling cheap seats. There is no way anyone on this planet, even Michael O’Leary can't argue that it is good business practice to charge eight quid for a passenger to go, it doesn’t go anywhere near the cost."

With all but a handful of services grounded at the peak of the pandemic in Europe, BA was losing £20million a day. The airline proposed to make up to 1,255 pilots redundant as part of 12,000 cuts across the business.

Ryanair announced in May plans to cut 3,000 jobs and reduce staff pay by up to a fifth in response to the Covid-19 crisis, which has grounded flights.

EasyJet has said it will cut up to 30 per cent of its workforce - about 4,500 jobs - as it struggles with a collapse in air travel caused by the virus pandemic.