Originally Posted by nwflyboy

Woke this morning to the breaking news of the travel ban (see below), and email from AF. AF says our flight IST-CDG is OK, original flight CDG-SEA is canceled, they’ve rebooked us CDG-AMS (on AF), then AMS-SEA on DL. So we have flights home - assuming there are no additional cancelations (which could happen, given the “ban”).

The “ban” is just hours old, seems to have been rolled out, um, somewhat ad hoc (I’m ttrying to avoid politics here...) and details at this point appear incomplete and a bit muddled: according to BBC, the ban does not apply to US citizens, permanent residents, or family members (as long as they pass some not-yet-specified health screening). Although it’s been described generally as applying to “Europe”, according to BBC it actually applies to the Schengen zone, the UK explicitly excluded. In practice, on the ground, I suspect things will evolve a bit over the next few days.

Given that I have been in Turkey (certainly non-Schengen, not on the “banned” list of countries, and with zero officially reported cases of the virus), and since we have freshly-issued tickets home, we should be OK. But we’re not scheduled to head home for 6 more days, and things probably will continue to evolve in that time.

There is a nonstop DL flight from CDG-SEA that would work for us; I’m thinking of trying to call AF and request that. Theres a chance more flights could be canceled. Right now we have three legs (IST-CDG, CDG-AMS, AMS-SEA). Three chances a flight could be canceled, three chances of other complication (what exactly constitutes the “required health screening”? just a thermal temp check? I’m not really worried about failing that, just looking to minimize potential failure points). One less connection would be nicer, but I’m thinking the real benefit would be one less opportunity for something to go sideways.

For the TATL leg, we’re looking at Delta, either from CDG-SEA or AMS-SEA. Does anyone here have any insights into which route Delta would be more likely to preserve? All things being equal, I’d rather cut out the extra connection at AMS. But I don’t want to bet on the wrong horse, only to find that my preferred route gets canceled in a few days.

I know I’m just reading tea leaves here, trying to guess which route would be the last one to go. Anyone have a guess as to which route is more important to Delta, CDG-SEA or AMS-SEA?

And FWIW I am starting to game out a Plan C (and D and E...) that would bypass the rest of Europe on the way home...but hoping that doesn’t become necessary...

Thanks for any insights/advice.