zeer0

I know there is a new law in place that passengers flying to Germany from Turkey must have a negative COVID test done in the past 48 hours. However, I cannot find any info on transit passengers in FRA and MUC that stay in the non-Schengen zone. Does this law only apply to passengers ending travel in Germany/E.U. or all passengers?

If I am flying from IST-FRA-LAX, do I need the COVID test or not? I will be staying in the non-Schengen zone the entire time.

Marcin83

Sorry, but I´ll add another question.
If I do MAD-FRA-TXL, technically I can avoid the quarantine, because in FRA I stay in the Schengen zone and don´t leave the airport and in TXL I arrive on a domestic flight.... ?

cas_de

It doesn't matter which route you take. You enter Germany from a high risk zone therefore you need to quarantine. How that's enforced is a different question. During the past lockdown they introduced passport controls between Spain and Germany. Don't know if they will do that again. It is unlikely that someone will stop you at TXL. The rules say that you need to contact the local CDC office (Gesundheitsamt) informing them that you have arrived from a high risk zone. They will formally put you in quarantine at a location you chose. If / how they are going to enforce it is another question.

Right now you can avoid quarantine by providing a negative covid-19 test or getting tested upon arrival. I think there was an agreement earlier this week to change the process after all the summer hols have wrapped up and everybody needs to go into quarantine for 14 days. That quarantine can be shortened by getting tested on or after day 5.

noname83

The covid check in frankfurt is outside the security area. So you cannot do the test without leaving security area (which I would try to avoid).
If Turkey has no test income requirements you will be good

daumueller

also, these rules exist for a reason... people trying to find loopholes or just ignoring the rules won’t make this mess any better...

Marcin83

It was just my curiosity. I don´t want to skip any rule I have an access to free qRT-PCR testing so it is no issue for me

flyertalker28120

Upon arrival in FRA, there will be passport control right as you exit the jetway or gate. This is unusual as MAD-FRA is an intra-Schengen flight but that's how it's been handled recently for arrivals from high-risk areas.

It sure appears that control is more about enforcing entry restrictions rather than the mandatory quarantine. But I guess the control at the internal border together with the flight attendant's control of the forms ("Aussteigekarten"), they will catch a non-trivial fraction of those trying to game the system. (On my last flight from a country Germany deems high risk into FRA, I got the impression flight attendants were very diligent in comparing the Aussteigekarten with the data on the passenger manifest.)

oliver2002

No restrictions on transit pax, you just stay on the N-S side and wait for your flight.

zeer0

UPDATE: So our friends left a few days early on the exact same flights home. They did not have any problems with not having a test. The new Turkey to Germany test requirement applies only if Germany is the final destination, not if someone is transiting through Germany. They said the Lufthansa check-in desks in IST did a very good job with written signs about this.

oliver2002

Report of ORD-FRA-BLR is here by @galacticos : no issues whatsoever in N-S transit at FRA.

Help. Stuck in India. Need to get back to US

fly747first

Good to know!

mattg85

We just departed IST this morning for FRA in transit to the UK. Can confirm there was no requirement to present Negative COVID test result, although we did get tested the night before the flight at IST and got the results around midnight so had one available if it had been requested.

Did have an interesting experience on arrival re: passenger locator forms. On flight 2 weeks ago from USA via Frankfurt we were informed we didn’t need to complete the form since we were only in transit. For this flight today the forms hadn’t been loaded on the flight so on arrival we had to wait for them to be distributed and flight crew insisted on we had to complete it even for transit passengers.

this was clearly an error since the main part of the form asks for an address in Germany for the next 14 days which clearly we don’t have. Nonetheless we completed the form and left the address parts blank and handed it back to crew.

On leaving the plane, transit passengers were told to disembark first and we were greeted by Bundespolizei who wanted to see passports and onward travel boarding cards which we duly presented. They did also ask us whether we had a negative COVID test and so we said we did - they did not ask to see it though and I imagine there were passengers behind us who did not have a test result (since it’s not required!)

nickab

Just wanted to say THANK YOU for taking the time to post your experiences. We got a scary automatic email from Lufthansa saying that all passengers traveling to Germany from Turkey require a negative COVID test, and neither Lufthansa’s website nor others seem to clarify that transit passengers are not affected.

zeer0

You know what's hilarious, we flew IST-FRA on the same flight. What a mess that was on arrivals with the forms being handed out. Someone in front of me started arguing with the flight attendants over filling it out because we were all transiting the non-Schengen part.

I was also surprised at how strict security in IST was for the flight. They had the same people who do Israel security at the check-in counters and gate. I flew IST-MUC on TK a few weeks earlier and there was none of that.

nickab

And to submit my data point -- we were not asked to fill out the forms as transit passengers, no COVID test was required (OLCI worked just fine, straight to gate), and yes, there were Bundespolizei at the end of the jet bridge, but they just asked us to show our passports and waved us through without opening the passports as soon as they saw them.