Welcome aboard the flight, but check these boxes first
/The Boston Globe
Beverly Beckham
Next time, I will tell you what it was like getting to be with my grandchildren after not seeing them for a year. Next time, I will tell you about Euan, the 8-year-old, and how big he’s grown, how he is devouring Harry Potter books, having seen all the movies and how, as we were out walking one day he paused in midsentence to point out a single, pink rose. “Isn’t it beautiful, Mimi?” he said. Next time I will tell you, too, about the 12-year-old and the 14-year-old.
For now though, COVID-19 continues to steal the show.
Some background: My son, his wife, and three children moved from New York City to Scotland in the middle of this pandemic. And we, his family, were fine with this. Scotland is just an ocean away, we said. Instead of taking Amtrak, we’ll fly.
But this was before. This was when it was only geography that separated us. Now is after. And after is a completely different world.
I’m not complaining about this world. I’m grateful that I’m still part of it. I’m grateful that I live in a country that has made it possible for me to travel. I’m grateful that I’ve been vaccinated and boostered. I’m grateful that I have the money to travel. I’m grateful for how far we’ve come.
But travel is not what it used to be.
Two months before COVID-19 caused the world to shut down, our children gave my husband and me a one-night stay at the TWA Hotel at JFK airport in New York. It was supposed to have been a trip to the past: The hotel is the actual TWA flight center from the 1960s, which recreates the glory days when traveling wasn’t quite white gloves and fine dining, but close.
But it wasn’t a trip to the past because there’s no going back to before. Time has changed everything. Technology and demand changed travel, but the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, caused the biggest changes. We take off our shoes now. We empty our pockets. Our bodies are scanned. We’re patted down. We eat — when and if we eat — with plastic forks.
Now there’s COVID-19 and more rules and restrictions. Now there are complicated forms to fill out, boxes to check, apps to download, documents to upload, and COVID tests to take. The rules and the forms and all the requirements differ not just among countries, but among cities and towns. And among airlines. And the rules begin not at the airport, but days before a scheduled flight. And not just TO a destination. But again when it’s time to fly home.
Traveling to Scotland two weeks ago, my husband and I needed not just proof that we were vaccinated. We needed to have the results of a COVID test in the hands of Scottish authorities no later than 48 hours after we arrived. How this worked — and this may have already changed — is we had to find a place that sold the correct COVID-19 test (it had to be a PCR test), purchase the test (this cost somewhere around $92 apiece), have the tests mailed to the address where we were staying, administer the tests ourselves, package them in the small box that came with the test, and take them to a post office that was authorized to accept the test. And then check our e-mails for the results.
If our son and daughter-in-law had not walked us through this process — purchased the tests, delivered them to us, helped us take the tests, located a qualified post office, and assured us that those 48 hours exempted Sundays — this would not have gone well.
Nine days after our arrival, in order to fly home, we needed another COVID test, only this time a different one, which required a drive to a qualified health clinic for a COVID-19 antigen rapid test, and which cost an additional $60 each.
Before COVID-19 you could book a flight, pack your bags, make sure your passport was valid, and just go.
Now one wrong step, one missing check mark or a check mark in the wrong box, one COVID-19 PCR test instead of an antigen rapid test, and you might turn out like the family of five we saw who were checking in at Edinburgh Airport for a return flight to the US. They couldn’t board because they confused these tests. So they were stuck in Scotland for at least another day. Forced to take and pay for yet another COVID test and — if the airline played hardball — were required to purchase five new tickets.
Vaccinations. COVID tests. They allow us to travel. But it’s the rules, the lack of consistent ones, that have hampered the fight against this virus since the beginning, that are now not only getting in the way of our ability to travel but taking away our desire to travel, too.
