mileageking

Decision on whether a country should provide reciprocity should not be based on politics, free visa or VOA, etc. It should be kept simple and travel should open from a region or country based on how they are performing or progressing specific to COVID-19.

IstKong

Before, we asked for reciprocity when reviewing the socioeconomics of each countries. Why can't we ask for reciprocity when it is about their sanitary situation or infection rate ? I really don't see the point, except showing the world that EU is weak and in desperate need of foreign tourists, when others countries just don't open.

And you are wrong. Politics, economics, geopolitics : all of this enters into consideration when you are building a border policy. That's an obvious fact that government use this criterias to decide if they are signing a visa waiver agreement with another country.

It should be exactly the same when lifting travel restrictions in this crisis.

Economics and politics justified opening our countries with reciprocity. If the new criteria is infection rate or public health, we should have the same requirements of reciprocity.

I mean, look at Japan : we had a mutual visa waiver agreement. After the pandemic, they banned us, required a visa and quarantine. And now we are accepting japanese in Europe without visa, without quarantine, but Japan is not lifting any restrictions on us ? That's just crazy.

It has never ever worked liked this in our borders policies.

It's dangerous because there is a risk of Europe and other countries getting used to this sort of policy, and this policy staying in place after the pandemic. It just puts us on a very weak position.
I'm not seeing Europe imposing a visa on Japanese any days. But the probability of Japan getting used to this policy and continuing to impose a visa to us, while their citizens continuing to travel to Europe without visa is high.

WillTravel

The problem is that you might have the coronavirus at an earlier stage of the incubation process such that you will test negative on Day 1, but not later in the 14-day period. You might have caught it on the flight over, for example. Hence the 14-day quarantine. New Zealand has had several returnees test negative to start, and then positive before their quarantine is done.

Owenc

Or maybe Europe is just being transparent and not using the situation as a Political football?

I do think it is rude of Canada not to reciprocate, but perhaps that’s down to fear of upsetting America, or perhaps wanting to have a North American only travel zone this year?

The proposed government grant in America has me wondering if Canada and America has agreed to restrict the travel of their citizens to North America, this year.

Taikucing

I doubt Canada will be welcoming US tourist anytime soon.

flyingcrazy

My brain says reciprocity is futile and adding to the problem of shutting down forever. I am very impressed with Europe leading the way in 'grown up thinking', and actively trying to reopen travel and move away from the unsustainable view of many other countries of shutting their borders forever.

However my heart agrees with the French 'why on earth should we let them in if they are still banning us?'.

I do have to say this has fallen badly on Trump. I remember his smug press conference in March where he announced Schengen/UK/Ireland were banned from the US. Now as Europe is controlling the virus and moving on, the US is suffering badly from it, so the tables have turned.

exbayern

LH 492/492 FRA-YVR will be 3 days per week, and Eurowings is flying already since last month FRA-YYC. LH 476/477 MUC-YVR is dead for the year. KLM is still scheduled to fly (but only 3x/week AMS-YVR from 9th July) AF however is not operating, nor is TK for July at least.

It does make me wonder through about these flights being cancelled, and the claims from business that they fly in product daily. I've always doubted Ladurée's claim that they flew in product daily on AF flights since they expanded globally. They were using that claim when the CDG-YVR flight first started but obviously the shop has reopened, but the flight is not flying.

I do think that between business travel, essential travel, dual citizens, permanent residents, international students, family, etc there may be enough demand to warrant these 3x weekly flights, although sadly down from the summers of completely full LH flights FRA-YVR and MUC-YVR.

yvrcnx

I can see Lufthansa operating the 3 x weekly A330 service for July but wouldn't be surprised as you mentioned if it was cancelled due to the limited number of "qualified" passengers being able to use this service unless there is a lot of cargo they can carry in addition to passengers.
Air Canada has no nonstop flights scheduled to Frankfurt until August 1st which is currently listed to be operated by their 777-300ER and I doubt very much they'll fill it unless they need it for cargo.

The TK flight from Istanbul was postponed to September, though here too I wouldn't be surprised if that gets cancelled as well.
Maybe this is actually a good time for TK to get into the YVR market with much less competition than usual.

I would really like to book LH or KL to go to Europe this summer but will wait until I see these planes actually land here in Vancouver and even then I would wait for a month or so to see if flights are sustainable as I don't want to deal with the cancellations, refunds and voucher situation again.

13901

Meanwhile Italy has gone against the EU (remarkably, it doesn't happen often) and has insisted on 14-day quarantine for ALL non-EU travellers, even for those coming from the 14 "green" countries, even if they are transferring through a EU hub.

Feels a bit stupid in my mind, especially if the EU has a group has made a decision, but it's also true that the worst of Covid is a very fresh memory in people's mind. Having said that, I doubt they'd have had lots of visitors anyway.

source (Italian): https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/202...C12-P7-S1.8-T1

nk15

I guess it is ok to be stricter, but not more lenient...

YYCCL3

I don't think EW is flying FRA-YYC yet. The route seems to have disappeared with 0 fanfare. I live near the flight paths for YYC and am part of the local planespotters photo group on FB. Believe me, if a Eurowings had shown up it would have been big news. 99% of what we see these days are A320s and 737s.

I'm scheduled to fly on LH492 in 11 days. There are currently 11 seats occupied in J. Which is 2 more than the 77W I took YYZ-FRA on the weekend.

13901

Having done some extra digging, it seems the EU 'law' is a decision, not a ruling, so it can be flexed by member states.

the810

It's only a recommendation. EU does not have control over border issues, that belongs to individual member states.

WilcoRoger

Exactly. And even the recommendation says somewhere that countries might apply stricter criteria if they want, but cannot apply loser ones - so the list should be rather read as "pax from some of these 14 countries might be admitted to some of the EU countries"

Seyan

Germany has published a document that the borders will be open for eleven states but for three they want reciprocity (marked with *):

1. AUSTRALIA
2. GEORGIA
3. JAPAN *
4. CANADA
5. MONTENEGRO
6. NEW ZEALAND
7. SOUTH KOREA *
8. THAILAND
9. TUNISIA
10. URUGUAY
11. CHINA *

https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/p...hraenkung.html

I don't believe Japan, South Korea and China will play the game.