The biggest UK-owned airport group has urged the government to urgently introduce coronavirus testing for arrivals, warning that its travel policy was “a millstone around the neck” of the aviation industry. Charlie Cornish, the chief executive of Manchester Airports Group which owns Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports, said the UK had “stood still” while other countries had introduced a mass testing regime for travellers. He said: “Ongoing uncertainty and confusion surrounding the restrictions British people will face when they travel abroad is like a millstone around the neck of one of our most important industries and is placing hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.” The intervention will add further pressure on ministers over a travel policy that leading airline figures have said is killing the industry. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, on Friday said airport testing was not a “silver bullet solution” to getting rid of 14-day quarantines, which industry figures say are drastically hitting traveller numbers. Cornish said: “Testing is a safe way to cut the time people need to isolate when they return to the UK from high-risk areas. It would give consumers the confidence to book travel and enable the aviation industry to protect its future. “Public health will always come first, but our government has stood still while other countries, including Germany, have moved quickly to get their testing regimes up and running and enable travel to low risk regions. “With plummeting passenger numbers, government needs to act now to ensure the travel sector survives into next year and helps power the recovery of the UK economy.” More than 30 countries already have a system of airport testing for Covid-19, including France, Germany, Greece, Austria, the UAE and Iceland. Manchester is the UK’s busiest airport outside London but this week had to close Terminal 2, only months after it reopened, owing to low demand. The head of Southampton, Aberdeen and Glasgow airports accused ministers of “overseeing the demise of UK aviation” with its refusal to adopt airport testing, a measure also backed by London Gatwick and Heathrow airports. The UK’s first airport testing facility was set up at Heathrow last month, allowing up to 13,000 people a day to be screened. However, the Times reported that the the unit was not operational because government had refused to agree that those with a negative result could avoid quarantine. Earlier on Friday, Shapps said testing on landing was “unlikely to find the vast majority of people who have travelled with coronavirus and are asymptomatic”. He added: “I hear the calls from the airports and I spoke last night to John Holland-Kaye, who’s the boss of Heathrow airport and many others. It’s not that we’re ignoring the great work they’re doing on trialling tests. “But I’ve spoken to my opposite number, for example, my French opposite number. They did put testing in but of course realised it isn’t actually the silver bullet solution to this. What you’ve got to be able to do is test further down the line with a period of quarantine as well.” Paul Charles, the chief executive of travel consultancy the PC Agency, said: “The quarantine policy is in tatters and dividing the United Kingdom. Consumers are totally confused by the different approaches and it’s impossible to understand the government’s own criteria any more on when to add or remove a country.”