Engineering Travel

UK, But the flight also had many travelling from USA who had connected at LHR.

CatchThePigeon

I've got until 20 July to pay balance of BA holiday. Seriously considering cancelling. Queues and delays I can cope with. Any of us testing positive or being deemed as close contact to a fellow passenger who does is not something I think I should risk. Double vaccinated but won't make a difference if testing positive on arrival.

Who would have thought travelling to Greece would be so much more difficult than last summer.

ratechaser

Our trip to JTR last year felt a lot less stressful than the chaotic, making rules up on the fly nonsense that we are faced with this year.

Shows what a nonsense it is layering on a veneer of controlled planning like the traffic light system. Far too many variables (political and epedemiological) to make that survive any real stress test...

mysyk7

We flew into ELF yesterday evening on BA642. We were in CE row 2 and had our PLF scanned, passports stamped and then directed to a make-shift testing facility at the far end of the arrivals hall. I was waiting for our bags at the belt less than 5 minutes after de-planing. Despite doing the whole flight (not just lead PLFs), there didn’t seem to be a massive wait and the majority of passengers joined us waiting for bags at the belt. The only slow part was having one immigration office doing passports. Text message confirming negative results came 45 minutes later. Really unsure what would have happened if it had been positive or if anyone else on the plane had i.e. tracking people down and moving them to state-funded isolation hotels….

paulaf

When we flew into Kalamata 3 weeks ago the whole plane was tested but being first off we were only delayed by 15 minutes as joined the queue from the previous flight. This despite showing vaccination certificate they blamed it on the Delta variant. Someone on the same flight said on trip advisor they were delayed by 90 minutes, guess it depends where you are sitting. We were allowed to leave straightaway and got a text a couple of hours later.
Despite being a bit peeved at the time as it was at the end of a long day and surprised they tested everyone, as I had read it was just the lead passenger on the PLF, I would still definitely go to Greece again as it's fantastic when you get there. We did an NHS lateral flow test the night before for peace of mind too.

eh220160

The latter situation would be relatively speaking disastrous… hopefully that doesn’t happen!

lost_in_translation

I’m not even sure how this would work on some of the smaller Greek islands! I don’t think there is hotel capacity to have many of the small hotels just sat around empty in case someone tests positive - I imagine they’d have to do a fairly strict row cut off or face shipping people to a different island or something…

tom139

The same occurred in JMK - allegedly all passengers from all UK origin flights are being tested.

Tiger_lily

I'm fairly sure I've read something over the weekend which suggested that commondeering cruise ships to use as isolation hotels was the next step for the smaller islands. Mykonos has gone into some sort of semi lockdown now and the big concern on Crete is about the uptick in Heraklion and Rethymnon

swiss Julie

That would make sense - I've seen a handful of stories over the weekend where the isolation hotels on some islands are already full. Note if you get a positive pre-departure PCR test on the way home you'll also be shunted off to a state sponsored isolation hotel for 10 days. Apparently the hoteliers are paid EUR15 a night if the room is empty and EUR50 a night if occupied, just to give an idea of the food budget!

eh220160

All very grim. Anyone have any insight as to whether UK passport holders on intra-EU flights are also being "randomly selected" for on-arrival testing?

ermis177

It has nothing to do with your passport but purely the destination you are coming from...

binman

I am booked for mid August into ATH and out of JTR. Mrs Binman and I both double jabbed but beyond flight and 4 points nights at the IC Athens nothing else booked. I am quite relaxed about travel but most Greek hotels want 2-3 weeks notice to cancel and in this environment that isn’t working for me.
I will book once in Athens and not before then make our Merry way to JTR to come home.
intrigued by comments earlier about testing in Piraeus. Is this mandatory? Should we book in advance or take our own LFT? Would be interested to understand if there are restrictions between mainland and the islands and indeed between islands!

Tiger_lily

The coastguard are supposed to be checking paperwork in Piraeus now because the ferry companies weren’t doing it. Latest info on ferry travel here >

https://www.greeka.com/greece-covid-19-updates/

marble35

Were children tested too? Have a four and seven year old flying on 21/08!