Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Corona / Covid-19 virus - airport and flying restrictions, and licensing / medical issues

EASA has already said that medicals will only be valid with vaccines approved by the EMA. How that is supposed to be interpreted is another matter:

  • will other vaccines invalidate the medical?
  • will a EMA approved vaccine validate the medical no matter what?
The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Guidance from the FAA is not to operate an airplane for 48 hours after vaccination. I think the FAA simply follow the CDC guidance and approvals. Which as of now means Moderna or Pfizer. I think Johnson & Johnson will apply for approval soon for their on-shot vaccine.

The FAA’s position is that it’s happy with any vaccine approved by the FDA.

Andreas IOM

Probably one of the busiest February flying days we‘ve ever had in Germany.

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Flying is not illegal here but since some stupid person(s) demanded “guidance” from the CAA, they predictably got it, and the DfT says you can’t do A to B and can do only engine health flights. It is all guidance though. I am not aware of an exhaustive (legally binding) list of permitted reasons for leaving the house.

It appears that the bit which makes it “not advisable” to fly A to B is the current “essential travel only” guidance, and according to the timetable they published yesterday it sounds like that might disappear around 12 April, when they will “allow” family holidays in the UK:

They don’t actually say this but obviously you can’t have “essential travel only” and still allow family holidays.

That should also enable travelling abroad, although you will have the quarantine stuff to return back to.

It is all just “guidance” though – except for the quarantine.

However, this bit must also remove the “essential travel” guidance, and should make it possible to do a fly-in within the UK:

Reportedly people are booking lots of holidays abroad for June onwards

But we don’t know the quarantine/testing regime then. There will have to be something, because many younger people go on holiday for “heavy close-up social stuff” and, like summer 2020, they will bring back a lot of virus, and any new strains. So I reckon there will be mandatory testing on return, with the test done before embarking on the return flight (because once people arrive here, you can’t keep track of where they go, unless you do the horrible “hotel quarantine” thing). So for a day trip to France you would do the test back home.

I see firms advertising the cheap tests under £10, for the corporate market.

The UK is moving very slowly, considering the vast numbers being vaccinated. 17.7M so far.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

In fairness, they should move slowly. Essentially they want the vaccine to virtually eliminate the virus domestically. Keep the R value below 1 by having sufficient vaccinated people, and that will eventually eliminate it.

But there are unknown factors still, that could lead to that being more difficult.
- New strains that are more infectious, or which the vaccine is less effective.
- People’s behaviour changing so much that the R number would have been brought up to 4 or 5, and the vaccines only mitigates that down to 1 (because they aren’t 100% effective at preventing infection).
- Lots of people refusing to take the vaccine later in the roll out as the age profile gets lower and the numbers of infections goes down.

I think this is one thing where it’s better to under promise and over deliver to allow to capacity to deal with infections not coming down as expected.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

It’s stunning to see how the vaccination progress is totally different in the UK, the US and Israel while the EU plus Switzerland have basically run out with no idea when the next batches will come and no perspective when any sort of herd immunity via vaccines can be expected.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

As I posted earlier, the UK sunk 3BN into vaccine orders before they knew whether a vaccine was even possible.

That is of the order of 1% of what CV19 will have cost the UK economy.

But this was not a secret. Everybody knew it.

We have already discussed the Brussels cockup which has delayed the mainland getting it by several months. And now the politicians are spreading politically convenient disinformation about the AZ vaccine being useless, when actually it is very similar to the Pfizer one.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

the EU plus Switzerland have basically run out with no idea when the next batches will come

According to the BBC health authorities in Germany have more than a million doses of the Oxford vaccine in store, which nobody wants to receive – thanks to some clever demand management by President Macron and other political leaders.

In the spirit of the EU and Schengen treaties (free movement, solidarity, and all that heart-warming stuff), can’t a Swiss citizen just nip into Germany and ask for an Oxford vaccine?

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

Can I have one?

Brit in France, my Partner/GF has kids in Germany if that helps the arguement – the way things are going here I doubt Ill get a vaccine until next year…

Sign in to add your message

Back to Top