AUH Quarantine to end July 1
 

https://www.thenationalnews.com/busi...says-1.1223667

could be good for higher frequencies to return and hopefully the F lounge to reopen... Im still wondering if we will see midfield transition prior to Expo with EY and its 2x LCC plays moving in or EY and full service carriers and LCC operating from the T3 and T1..

https://gulfbusiness.com/the-uae-sho...ates-chairman/

Hopefully soon allowing travel to and from the UK as well

That's great! I have a trip planned in August.

Follow up question: My family is landing in AUH first week of July with 7+ hour layover on the way to MLE. With the lifting of restrictions do you think we could leave the airport for a few hours to grab dinner and take a look around? I am open to suggestions/comments up to and including calling me an idiot for considering it. We are flying biz on Etihad. Thanks!

Hi Los_Pepes,

This is only conjecture as the final travel protocols haven't been announced. I expect Abu Dhabi will replace quarantine with asking visitors to remain at home/in their hotel room until they receive the results of a test-on-arrival. Results are super quick these days, but maybe not quick enough for dinner on a 7-hr layover!

With hope, depending on where you're coming from your PCR test may be accepted on arrival. They had issues with knowing how many fake ones are out there

USA, Germany and Spain added to the Green list now.

Germany added the UK to their Quarantine list as of this morning, how long before others follow suit. Though is for the "Indian" variant which is prevalent in the UAE surely as well as elsewhere

I will keep my fingers crossed that with our negative (presumably) PCR and proof of vaccination they will let us out of the airport for few hours.

Well I very much doubt it will happen this year, but depends on your definition of "soon". If they could somehow stop all transit passengers mixing with each other then it would be more likely, but putting in new systems could take a long time, if it's even possible.

What surprised me is that though the UAE is not allowed direct flights, nor is Oman or Qatar because they are also Transit points....

There are direct flights from India Pakistan and Bangladesh as the direct flight ban wasn't imposed on them

So who's transit through the UAE are they actually worried about so as to ban the flights even if it does stay on the red list ?

LHR opening Terminal 4 to receive Red flights on June 1st allegedly

For the sheer number of people who would go there for holidays from the UK they could readily not allow any transit passengers and only take returning holidaymakers on a reduced number of flights, is still more than the current zero

Has there been any indication that the end of the AUH Quarantine will also remove the PCR test requirement for transit passengers? In a few of the news releases it indicated that the goal was to more closely align the policies of AUH with DXB - where I don't believe a PCR test is a transit requirement for many origin countries - so wasn't sure if plans for EY had been announced/rumored. We are thinking of flying MLE-AUH-JFK in mid August but the PCR test requirement for AUH transit would be difficult to obtain in Maldives. Thanks for any insights.

I thought all the Maldivian resorts were now offering PCR tests as standard for departing clients? This was certainly true for the handful of resorts I looked at about 6 weeks ago.

Also what happens when the widely anticipated opening up of the UK <-> routes happens at the end of June. Are the US airports not hubs to South America and other places on the red list?