My First Flight Since January 2020
GTI’s own Chris King took advantage of great airfare and recently made his first trip since January 2020.
Prior to COVID, it was my goal to visit at least one new country every year. In the past few years, I have traveled to Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and Ghana. In May of 2020 I was booked to travel to Japan however, the ongoing pandemic saw to it that my trip was unfortunately cancelled. With the opening of various countries who are welcoming tourists again, I took advantage of a great price that I saw in the GTI system and myself and some friends traveled to St Thomas, Virgin Islands in early June. This was my first flight since January 2020.
To enter St. Thomas we needed a negative COVID test taken within 5 days of travel. We took our test on a Saturday, and had our results on Sunday. From there, the results had to be uploaded into the USVI portal to seek authorization to travel to the islands. The authorization came through a couple of days later as a QR code - this trip is really going to happen!
Even though I am not a great flyer (I swiftly grab the seat arm rest at the slightest amount of turbulence), I was greatly looking forward to traveling again. The Philadelphia airport seemed rather normal. Yes, it is still a requirement to wear a mask in the airport and the lines for the coffee shops were extremely long, but most everything felt familiar and like pre-COVID days. To board the aircraft we scanned our boarding pass along with our travel authorization QR code at the gate. The TSA still requires everyone to wear a mask on board until September 13th at the earliest, and everyone complied with this. I had additional peace of mind knowing that everyone on board had recently undertaken a COVID test and that a portion of passengers were likely fully vaccinated. Traveling from the US, passengers do not need to clear immigration at St Thomas, so we stepped off the plane, picked up a rental car and went on our way. The five days that we had there were filled with pool, beach, food, drink and mosquitos (I can currently count 50 bites). We had a snorkeling excursion where I saw fish, sea turtles and a reef shark (sharks are another phobia of mine). Being from the North of the UK where hot sunny days are not typical, I also got a little burnt even while wearing factor 50.
A negative COVID test was not required to return to the US from the USVI as they are a US overseas territory (a negative test is generally required to return from other countries). We did go through immigration at the St Thomas airport on the journey back, and the lines to get through security were quite long. Travelers that had TSA pre-check were breezing straight through. The flight back was the same as the outgoing flight, although we hit a thunderstorm on the way into the Philadelphia airport, creating quite a bit of turbulence (swiftly grab arm rest).
During my 17 years working in humanitarian travel, in which I have booked passengers to countries including Bhutan, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea and Burkina Faso, I have never booked anyone to St. Thomas. This trip didn’t require me to have to understand challenging visa requirements or navigate connecting flight schedules. Therefore, I can appreciate that my trip is not a typical one for GTI’s passengers, but it helped me understand what it is like to travel again.
I have a milestone birthday in August (40) and as more countries open to fully vaccinated travelers, I hope that another trip is on my horizon soon.