Catching an international flight with the Covid travel restrictions is not for sissies!

I would like to share my experience so that perhaps other travelers can avoid the many potholes and downfalls that the present travelling landscape offers.

Chaos

Regardless of your destination, be warned, Chaos with a capital C awaits you. Especially if like me, you decide to face all the paperwork, preparations and bookings on your own. There are some travel agents who can help at a price, and it is not to say that they will be familiar with the specific paperwork or regulations you are facing in your specific case.

Your first enquiry should be directed to the Consulate or Embassy of the country you are wanting to travel to. Generally the websites are updated with the latest regulations and process needed to enter the desired country. Don’t take things for granted, read everything carefully and twice!
It really is a minefield of small print and addendum rules that needs to be processed adequately to understand the full implications.

Paperwork

Be ready to fill in many forms, online and physically and to repeat the same information numerous times. It is health declarations, travel applications and reason for traveling that never seem to end. You will have to clear your entry into your final destination and your exit from South Africa.

The Exit from South Africa is a relatively simple affair: Contact the Department of Home Affairs with your reason for travel and required documents. They will send you an automated reply which you print and is apparently sufficient to exit the country. This permission was briefly glanced at by the staff at the Joburg airport. Don’t bother trying to phone Home affairs, they do not answer phones as they are all travelling to disneyland for medical reasons.

Booking the ticket

Airlines are desperate. They will sell you a ticket even if they know that the flight will be cancelled. Once they have your money good luck claiming it back. Mostly they will just delay the usage of the ticket until such time normal flights resume, or they go bankrupt.
With the Covid travel restrictions, only repatriation flights with clearance from DIRCO (Department of International Relations and Cooperation) are allowed to leave South Africa at the moment. As a result the tickets are only one way and very expensive.

The DIRCO website does not have a list of approved flights. Those are normally listed by the various embassies (but not always all). There are also some Social Media groups that seem to have their finger on the pulse of the flights allowed. One that helped me was L.I.S.A on Facebook (Locked in SA).

At the Airport

Exiting South Africa was different from the norm in a few ways. Firstly there was an extra security check where you get asked to put your luggage on the road outside the international terminal and a sniffer dog goes through it. Probably all normal procedure that you don’t normally see.

Secondly, the international airport is empty and pretty much everything is closed. There are some “street vendors” selling goods at exorbitant prices (in keeping with international terminal tradition) and one coffee shop operates in the international terminal past the check in.

The flights with covid restrictions

At the present time of writing this article travel to Europe from South Africa is still attached to a mandatory self quarantine due on arrival due to the covid travel restrictions. This causes some issues with your point of arrival. You are not allowed to use public transport on arrival in Europe. You should arrive via air as close as possible to your final destination.
In my particular situation where I was traveling to the island of Sardinia. I would normally travel to Rome and catch the ferry. Not this time. I was forced to fly directly to the island and commence my self quarantine on arrival after a short trip to the residence which must be organised prior to your arrival. This inadvertently caused a problem with my luggage.

From Johannesburg my luggage was only tagged to Rome (my first point of entry into the EU) where I would normally collect and go past customs to check into my next flight. However, in Rome the luggage retrieval area is past the passport control. As a result of covid travel restrictions I was unable to collect my luggage. This brought about a 4 day wait for my luggage to arrive as you cannot technically declare the luggage lost. I was able to resolve the issue, but only because I had someone in Sardegna helping me and also I thankfully speak the language.

Try and ask all these questions at the check in at departure and prior to that to the embassies. It is probably different depending on what airport you fly into and which airlines you use.
Once you get on the airplane you are pretty helpless, or you are going to spend a lot of money on roaming cellular phone calls.

Inside the plane

The actual flights were also quite chaotic with Covid travel restriction regulations changing from one company to another, with some insisting on physical distance and others the wearing of masks and visor. The flight out of South Africa was packed with mask and visor compulsory. A fairly chaotic boarding and exit procedure did jeopardize any wish for physical distance. The internal flight in Europe was more driven by physical distancing (visor not required, but again, once in the terminal and at the checks, physical distancing became more difficult.

With regards to Italian and European regulations, take a pen and get ready to fill forms for every arrival and departure and on the plane.
I suspect that the latest  therapy against Covid 19 is to smother it with piles of paper.

After almost 7 months of travel disruption, you would think that there would be some kind of global protocol. Sadly there isn’t.

So take a good pill of patience and stay friendly with the staff. They are just on the receiving end of the same chaos we are experiencing as travelers.

Good luck.