Mooney_Driver wrote:
Zurich Airport sais, you have to be at the airport 3 hours before departure in order to have your departure guaranteed due to long check in times due to Corona document checks. That makes 4am. Only the counters only open at 5.
Can’t you do check-in the day before? I did that – twice – when flying back to the US from Vienna earlier in the year. Worked a treat.
Oooops, hadn’t seen your subsequent post.
Just to complete the saga, I got the plane to Sofia, Frankfurt was much easier. There were queues but things were quick and without problems
On Arrival in Sofia, we were let out of the plane in groups of 10 so we would not be too close to each other. However, this was twarted by the queue for health check, where about 500 people were cramped into a small corridor for about 20 minutes waiting time.
In fact, I think Kafka would have loved this. In the name of protection from covid, they do indeed force people into waiting queues for hours at a time and without any kind of distancing and in exacly the kind of environment which should be avoided at all cost .
If in the last 2 years I really had massive chances to get infected, it was alway when travelling airline. Not on the plane but before and after. This, imho, is unacceptable.
What we need is unified rules for travel, which do not require 20 minutes deliberation and reading of regulation by check in staff. What we need is a possibility to get a travel authorisation before the trip which can be checked at the same time as the passport and as fast.
France is now off the “amber plus” list here, so we are back to the old discussion: we can do a meet-up at LFAT 
Still need one PCR test though.
They are coming down in price, but most are still in the £100 region. The problem is that most are sold by criminals and the result comes back after a few days at best. There are no walk-in options I know of, apart from turning up at a lorry driver testing site, and pretending to be a lorry driver. So one needs to take the test ~ 2 days before the trip. That should then meet the UK requirement of “on or before day 2 after returning”.
Peter wrote:
They are coming down in price, but most are still in the £100 region. The problem is that most are sold by criminals and the result comes back after a few days at best. There are no walk-in options I know of, apart from turning up at a lorry driver testing site, and pretending to be a lorry driver. So one needs to take the test ~ 2 days before the trip. That should then meet the UK requirement of “on or before day 2 after returning”.
My understanding is you need to do two tests:
I don’t think the second test can be done before arrival and therefore also be used as the first test. What does work and is permitted is to take the first test prior to departure from England if the stay in LFAT is short and therefore means that one doesn’t have to find a French test centre and spend time bothering with the pre-arrival test.
The relevant regulation can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/582/contents
Do you have a reference?
The guidance for short trips is as I posted, but I can’t find the reference either
IMHO a single test must work because
So I am sure that with one PCR test before going to France, one is fine Actually that test could be the rapid test too, but it would need to be supervised which tends to not work.
Having been the businessman doing a one-day trip, one can certainly use one test for outbound and inbound, e.g. if the destination country requires testing, for the purpose of complying with the first test (first bullet point in my reply above).
So if one has the sample taken on day T, receives the result on day T+1, enters the destination on day T+2 and returns to the UK on T+3, this all works with one test for the purpose of the pre-arrival test for England.
If the destination country does not require any testing, to save money and time and to avoid running the destination to get a test, do the antigen test at 8 am in the morning on day T, get the result at 8.30 am on day T, depart straight away and then return on day T+3 at the latest.
However, the second test needs to be a PCR test and needs to be done after arrival. If you have recently filled an the PLF, you need to specify the specifically accredited day 2 testing provider who upon receiving details from you regarding flight number, arrival date, post-arrival address etc, issues a 12-character booking number which is a required entry in the PLF. This means you can’t send them a sample before your arrival date.
Relevant references are in The Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel and Operator Liability) (England) Regulations 2021
Section 6 (Requirement to book and undertake tests): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/582/regulation/6
Schedule 8 (Mandatory testing after arrival in England): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/582/schedule/8 (in particular paragraphs 7 and 8)
Similiarly, “Green list rules” (which would apply to double-vaccinated travellers arriving from France starting this Sunday) at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/red-amber-and-green-list-rules-for-entering-england#green-list-rules say clearly:
You must take a COVID-19 test on or before day 2 after you arrive.
which is not the same as “on or before day 2”!
In other words, two tests are required, one pre-arrival and one post-arrival test. (“arrival” in the context of "arriving in England)
If it helps in terms of cost though, I have found
https://www.randoxhealth.com/covid-19-day-2-and-8-testing
to be one of the cheapest day 2 tests at £43 if you use code “BritishAirways43”.
That is very cheap, but: “Expected delivery is 4-6 working days once order confirmation is sent.” I will order one, just to keep it for a day trip.
wbardorf wrote:
If it helps in terms of cost though, I have foundhttps://www.randoxhealth.com/covid-19-day-2-and-8-testing
to be one of the cheapest day 2 tests at £43 if you use code “BritishAirways43”.
Are these the same as the NHS ones?
However, the second test needs to be a PCR test and needs to be done after arrival. If you have recently filled an the PLF, you need to specify the specifically accredited day 2 testing provider who upon receiving details from you regarding flight number, arrival date, post-arrival address etc, issues a 12-character booking number which is a required entry in the PLF. This means you can’t send them a sample before your arrival date.
However, for a day trip, they can’t tell if you took the test (which you bought some days before) before you went or after you came back.
Also you can put “any date you like” if flying by GA
Maybe I am missing something, but I am just trying to be practical about it. With an airline it is much harder because they won’t carry you back without the pre-return test.
