ffay005

I suppose it's free for residents only. But there should also be express testing facilities for transit pax, very moderately priced. The biggest problem still remains, though. If I book HEL-MUC-DXB and get a positive test result at MUC, what happens next? I'm not going to try.

zxcv1

Free for all arriving pax. Takes 2-5 days to get the result (by email).

Positive results are automatically communicated to the German federal health officials.

Courmisch

I'll just check every 2 weeks where I could go within the next 2.5 weeks. Off-season and with lackluster business demand, I don't expect a whole lot of offer nor demand for flights. And likely that will be be nowhere most of the time.

Not bullet-proof solution, but as I'm not the king (yet ) or even Lumo, Finnair has no reasons to bend over backward to accommodate me.

WilcoRoger

Coming from HEL, you don't need any testing at MUC. Just walked straight out. I guess the same would be true going to transfers (or just walk out and go to departures)

intuition

Firstly - there is not a lot any airline can do. Everything is just a mess. Not only the volatility in entry rules, but also the tendency for everyone to implement their own set of rules. It seems like every country wants to have their own set of rules, even if they just ever so slightly differs from their neighbours. So for every conceivable trip, you need to research millions of aspects. Your destination of course, but also every country you transfer in, even airside, and every country you've been to the last month or so.
And not only country, as many rules are on regional or city level. Today Norway put the city of Kalmar on red-list. That's an geographical area consisting of less than 70k inhabitants. This is beyond bizarre and I am sure very very very few people have the stamina to keep researching this on a daily basis. And so this mishmash kills pretty much all travel.

With that said, you are right airlines could offer a full refund policy for "refused entry due to covid travel restriction". It is actually not far fetched or difficult to implement - Finnair has long had a refund policy for refused visa. (Perhaps gone now, but it used to be a separate paragraph in the fare rules)

Then, they would also need to seriously fix refunds. Finnair is far from worst, but I think the trust for the industry is damaged. To regain that, they would need to deposit all money with a third party and only be allowed to touch it say T-3 days (or when ever the cut off for full covid refund would be). Ie, if ticket is cancelled, refund would be processed directly from third party. From a stack of controlled cash, where every dime owned is liquid is payable instantly.
Here in the western part of the kingdom, Länsstyrelsen is where you send your rental money if your landlord can't be trusted. A similar system would solve the refund trust issue.

Also, I guess airlines could help monitor the entry restriction for the travellers. Sadly, Timatic has collapsed in this situation and cannot be trusted and so airlines have very little support from these type of actors and so this is probably unrealistic to wish for. But if they did monitor my reservation's viability (based on my passport, departure, transfer and arrival country) they would offload a lot of worries/work.

The idea about offering tests is not bad either. Someone said it was unrealistic and/or not the task for an airline. But actually Ving (Stordalen's cut of the collapsed Thomas Cook) did just that. When Greece did a 180 on us and with very short notice required a negative test less than 36h before take-off, the charter company offered free testing. (In the end I think flights were cancelled anyway, but their first reaction was to try and solve the problem, not to cancel flights)

But even with these wishes granted, I have not much interest anyway. It is all just too messy. Even with practicalities fixed, we still have the issues with closed or poorly serivce lounges, onboard catering/service and so on. We all love flying, and that is not just a question of getting from A to B.

So I am rather fed up, and not much inclined to book anything under any circumstances. I have 1 Finnair longhaul flight that has been moved so many times I can't keep track. I have a Finnair flight to attend idiot's wedding this autumn, and it looks less and less likely Finland will be open to foreigners in time for that. I have 2 flights to Greece, via Germany that is not going to happen and I need to start shuffling them around. And I have two SK flights on flexible tickets. I had to cancel them because of the Finnair flights being moved, and my monies are now stuck in near-bankruptcy nut-case called a Scandinavian airlines system. (The only systematic is their 100% failure rate).

Fed up are the words.

ffay005

Yes, but going to DXB, I will need a test to gain entry and that's where the problem lies...

florens

Well said intuition and 100% agree.

Instead of rebooking for the umpteenth time I now opt for refunds (losing good deals I booked back when the world was normal) and now only book very short notice trips, but the research that has to be done is time consuming of course.