After the enforced fifteen-month layover, we were eager to get back to True Colors this year. We had left her in Italy as usual but they were amongst the hardest hit countries at the beginning of the pandemic and seemed to be adopting a very cautious approach to opening up to foreigners. Greece on the other hand has an economy that depends heavily on tourism and decided to open up sooner than some of their EU colleagues. So we felt that Greece would be a more predictable and positive point of arrival for this season.
There are no direct flights from Phoenix to either Italy or Greece, so each trip out or back implies a layover usually in some intermediate country. Hoping that a common language would be a sound basis for an easy transfer, we opted to fly through London Heathrow.
We booked our flights as soon as Greece allowed us to do so - about 8 weeks before our planned departure. About four weeks before we were due to depart, British Airways called us up and said they had decided to cancel our flight. Gnashing of teeth. But we mover our booking to the same flight the day before and everything was fine. Until a week later, when we got another call from British Airways saying that they were going to cancel this flight too.Very tempted to put a curse on British Airways but that seemed a bit pointless as they were giving a very convincing impression of being cursed already. So, instead, vowed never to fly BA again over the pond. Take THAT, British Airways!
The nice people at American found us another route which met our requirement of going through Heathrow but only flying BA for the leg from London to Athens.
Now COVID-19 testing and vaccination requirements vary widely from country to country and it seems from minute to minute. Given the circumstances this is more or less understandable and would be much more so if the countries would update/develop their computer systems accordingly and tell the public and the airlines just what they wanted them to do. But they pretty much don’t.
Here’s how that played out in our little scenario.
Fully-vaccinated people are welcome in Greece but to get to Greece we had to transfer through Heathrow. England was not yet ready to accept fully vaccinated people entering without a COVID test. Now as all of you who travel internationally know, governments are very clear that if you transfer “airside” through their country you are NOT repeat NOT entering the country. Er … well… kind of … sort of … with just this one exception COVID. It’s all a matter of semantics. But, yes, we had to get the tests needed for entry to a country we were not entering.
So far only a minor irritation until we looked at the timing. The tests had to be done no more that 72 hours before departure. This is where the semantics thing raises its head again. “Departure” it all depends what you mean by “departure”. We were connecting through Charlotte, so our first flight was domestic. the flight from Charlotte was the one which would take us to the UK. In one or two places on the UK site it says that the Charlotte to UK flight was or departure for England. But American thought otherwise and their policy was not to let people onto a flight connecting to a flight in the UK without all the necessary paperwork. So 72 hours was 72 hours before our first flight.
OK we could handle that but most tests take 12-24 hours for the results to be returned and, as those of you who were paying attention right at the beginning will recall, we were leaving on the morning of July 6. July 6 minus three looks like July 3. And in between those dates is July 4th our national holiday when things are CLOSED. the nice vaccination people suggested getting two tests - one on July 2 which was a backup and one on July 3 which would be the real one and they assured us they would be open. We got the test on July 2 no problem, but then they announced that testing and labs would be closed for July 3rd and 4th. No option but to try for a test early on July 5 and see what happens.
We got to the airport early but no results from the July 5 test. The airline pointed out that even if we had the test results the UK site and the BA site could take up to SIX HOURS to verify our results. So “no go” for us.
The American staff were amazing and re-routed us away from Heathrow (at our insistence) and had an itinerary in place for the next day. They also said that they were spending hours with each customer like us trying to understand and help them understand just what was required.
We decamped to the Phoenix Marriott spent a short night ther and flew uneventfully to Athens the next day.
The sad thing about all this is that Homer made up his stories about Odysseus, but I think even his credulity would have been strained by this saga.
Now this is the point where those of you who have ever had to deal with Greek bureaucracy are holding your breath waiting for the next shoe to drop. “The Greeks are up to the task of messing things up”, you are thinking. “Surely they won’t let themselves be beaten by the English.” But no shoe dropped (what is the sound of no shoe dropping?) The Greek app had been informative, friendly and easy to fill out. You get a temporary entrance permit when you enter your data and they say it will be finalized on the day of your arrival in Greece. And even for those of us who traveled overnight, the URL was updated automatically and it literally took two minutes to enter Greece.
It will take some time for us to recover from this and prepare for the return leg that is also through Heathrow (gulp). Hopefully things will have settled down a bit by then. if not, maybe we should just sail back.