Monday, September 13, 2021

a short tale of a wearly traveller

yesterday, three of us experienced the hassles of having to produce the 5 documents & dependencies on infrastructures required to travel/fly from crete to london during period  it is held in amber status by uk, due to covid cases (sep 2021)


1/ passport, on paper (possible e-passport - needed to get through LHR in less than a day:-) 


2/ vaccination status (2 QR codes) - on smart phone may need net access to download, if you forgot to do so ahead of time (or it was deleted)


3/ covid test result from within prev 72 hour (scan or paper)- typically given on paper, so you need a camera phone or scanner


4/ passenger locator form (PLF), including reference for 

day 2 PCR test booking after return. (so you probably needed email to get that booking)


BA required these to all be uploaded before checkin & issuing 

document number

5/ boarding pass (on smartphone or paper), needing access to

printer, scanner or camera phone & network. - I guess they might have accepted them all on paper at the checkin desk...


2 days after return, get PCR test and a day later get results (negative, unsurprisingly). However, a day after that, the three of us that travelled together all get pinged by the NHS Test&Trace to say we have been in contact with someone and now have to get another test - this is stupid, because we had not been together since landing back in the UK, so the only point of contact must have been another traveller on the plane. so we have all gotten negative PCR since then, and the NHS know this, so why ask us for another test? fail to join up thinking. (I'd say it was a race condition, but I've never heard of one that lasted over 24 hours).


The only way we were on the NHS records was via the passenger locator form (since they used both mobile & email to contact the three of us and that's the only place they would get that info) which has the booking info for the day 2 returnee PCR test on it. 

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misery me, there is a floccipaucinihilipilification (*) of chronsynclastic infundibuli in these parts and I must therefore refer you to frank zappa instead, and go home