British Airways CEO optimistic travel can resume on May 17

The chief executive of British Airways said he is optimistic that international travel can resume from May 17 despite Britain warning on Monday that it was too soon to say whether holidays could restart.

"We are optimistic that travel can resume on the 17th of May, and the British public should not lose hope, and we remain optimistic that this will happen," BA CEO Sean Doyle told an online briefing.

Earlier, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday his government was hopeful that non-essential international travel would restart from May 17, but did not want to underestimate the growing number of Covid-19 cases elsewhere.

"Obviously we are hopeful that we can get going from May 17th, but I do not wish to give hostages to fortune or to underestimate the difficulties that we are seeing in some of the destination countries that people might want to go to," Johnson told a news conference, adding that he did not want to see cases being reimported into Britain.

He said a taskforce would report later on this week to set out what might be a "reasonable" plan.