Temporary Resident of USA transiting through Frankfurt
 

Hello All,

I can't believe I made this mistake but I was wondering what folks here think should be the path forward. Basically, we wanted to go visit Cairo, Egypt and Istanbul, Turkey for a week and booked following two flights:

- Boston, USA to Cairo, Egypt (through Lufthansa BOS-FRA-CAI) on May 28, 2021
- CAI to ASR (turkish airline with connection in istanbul) on Jun 02, 2021
- ASR to Boston, USA (turkish airlines with connection in Istanbul) on June 06, 2021

I am on a TN visa (temporary resident) in USA and just realized that there is a Europe ban which disallows temporary residents to come back to USA if they have been in Schengen region in last 14 days (hence my transit stopover in Frankfurt on May 28 will cause an issue on my flight coming back).

At this point, if I try to select refund on Lufthansa, its giving me a whopping $40 refund as I booked a very restricted option (yes, I feel very dumb right now). I was hoping that the 14 day restriction is removed by June but it doesn't seem likely. There are no other flights to Cairo on Lufthansa that don't have a connection in schengen region so there is no point asking to change the flight.

I am thinking of calling and asking if I can get a travel credit but not even sure if I will get that as I booked an Economy (T) fare? Anyone encountered this or has any suggestions for me before I make the call? Thank you!!

Edit: If I could extend the trip to 14 days, that would have been the best case scenario but unfortunately, I don't have enough days off to allow this. Hence, going to Canada or Mexico for 7 extra days isn't a possibility at this time. Pushing the trip to few more months was something I have considered, I will call Lufthansa tomorrow and find out my options and make a decision then. Thanks for all the replies.

If you're staying in the non-Schengen part of the terminal and simply changing planes at FRA, I'm not sure if that counts as being *in* the Schengen region.
Posters in the Coronavirus and travel forum may able to provide better guidance.

The wording that appears in TIMATIC is "passengers who have transited or been in ..." so yes in that sense the non-Schengen part of the terminal still counts. Now the question is whether this will be enforced or if this could be enforced at all during your travel back. Since you will just transit the non-Schengen part, there is no obvious way for anyone to tell on your return that you have been through FRA (since obviously your passport would not be stamped at the German border.) But then of course TK could probably see your outbound segments on the reservation when you check-in at ASR or transit in IST.

If you were to travel back to the US via FRA then you would be denied boarding since LH enforces this by only boarding US citizens, permanent residents, and non-residents with exempted visa types. What I suspect will most likely happen for you, is you will be asked on check-in at ASR (and maybe before boarding at IST) if you have been in the Schengen Area (or UK, Ireland, China, Iran, India, or Brazil) in the past 14 days and they will take your word with whatever you answer. Personally I would not run the risk though and just try to explain the situation to an LH call-center agent and see if they can accommodate you on a different routing, change the ticket for a later date, or do a travel voucher.

Regarding the Schengen Travel Ban -> Even a 30 minute stay at Frankfurt Airport (airside non-Schengen) counts as a stay in the Schengen area.
OP is not admissable to the US until June 13.

TK staff at Kayseri will conduct a very diligent document check for US-bound passengers. They will notice your travel pattern and that you have stayed in the Schengen area. And if the staff does not notice it in Kayseri, the gate checkpoint at Istanbul Airport will uncover that. Don't take the chance!

Who has issued your ticket? Lufthansa? What are the first three numbers of your ticket number?
Lufthansa allows rebooking on all fares (incl. restricted T). You just need to rebook before May 28 and pay the fare difference. Hence, I recommend you to push back your return flight to June 13.
https://www.lufthansa.com/de/en/exte...ooking-options

btw: You are also risking a denied boarding situation at BOS. You haven't told us anything about your citizenship + we have no info how you want to get from CAI to Kayseri. If Egypt requires an onward ticket as entry requirement, you won't be allowed to board your LH flight BOS-FRA. You technically have a roundtrip ticket, but your ticket is unfliable. LH contract staff at BOS will spot that immediately and flag you.

Hi, the ticket from Boston to Cairo is through Lufthansa. First three digits of ticket # are 220. I am a Canadian citizen. From CAI to Kayseri, I am taking a Turkish airline flight on June 02 ( I didn't mention it as I didn't think that was needed, apologies).

Definitely not planning to take the risk of going as-is . Definitely not worth the stress. Thanks!

Then please rebook your flights - either to next year, next fall or postpone your return flight by more than one week. You should do some research beforehand to find T-availability.

BOS-FRA-CAI would be OK unless the OP presents a return ticket to a third country leaving Egypt; although, as other members have mentioned, TK would deny boarding the passenger on June 6 as the US is counting transfers as the passenger has been to that country.

Best case as mentioned is to change the return date to June 13 or some date later.
LH does not ticket TK segments on discounted fare revenue tickets thus I assume that the OP has more than one ticket for the entire journey.

It is possible that the US rules will change with the opening of some Schengen countries but I wouldn't count on it.

Don't think so.

The initial reason why Donald Trump banned travelers from the Schengen Area was solely because of Italy, thus I don't think that the USA would partially remove the Proclamation for individual Schengen states. It would be all Schengen member states removed at the same time or none of them being removed.

Although UK&Ireland could be interpreted separately.

Didn't mean to imply a partial lifting of the Schengen ban. Definitely be all or none.

If you're Canadian, maybe you should try to change the return IST-BOS to IST-YYZ, and then enter the U.S. after a week in Canada?

US-Canada land border is still closed to non-essential travel

Mexico would be an option.

Same as with Canada, essential travel only for land border