Social distancing, face masks, global pandemic thanks to Covid-19. All things that I wasn’t aware I’d be thinking about at the start of the year. However, as we slowly ease out of lockdown and start to exist in our ‘new normal’ I started asking myself how we would ever fly anywhere again. As it happens, we flew to Dubrovnik just last week and so as someone who has very recently gone through it, I thought I’d share what it’s like flying during the Covid-19 pandemic! My experience is detailed below but if you have any questions about flying during the pandemic, or flying with children during the pandemic, please just drop me a email (monkeyandpal@gmail.com) or a DM on Instagram.
So what’s it actually like flying during the Covid-19 pandemic? Overall, its far less stressful than I had imagined. We had to take a taxi to the airport as we weren’t leaving a car at the airport but even this was a lot more straight forward than I had thought. The main difference is obviously the requirement to wear a mask or face covering on all transport, and this started in the taxi. My husband and I both wore our masks throughout the taxi journey, as did our 5 year old. However, given that the taxi was scheduled for 4am and we had ‘rudely’ awoken our children, we didn’t force the issue with our two year old. As it happens she actually fell asleep for the taxi ride, something which probably wouldn’t have happened if she had been wearing her mask.
For info, currently in the UK any children under 11 are exempt from wearing a mask on any public transport, including flying. To read more, access the Gov.uk website here.
At the Airport
When we arrived at Heathrow airport, things were largely the same if not slightly quieter. My first observation was that there was plenty of hand sanitiser throughout the airport!! Also there were far more families travelling then I thought would be! It was obvious that some people were not worried in the slightest about flying during the Covid-19 pandemic and had to be reminded of the rules, including the requirement to wear a face covering as soon as you enter the airport. Staff were extremely friendly and extra-helpful. In fact, other than the fact we were wearing masks, nothing was particularly different. What did feel different was actually that in the security queue, there was little to no social distancing. It felt quite odd to have people stood so close after months of not really leaving the house. Having said that, people were still very respectful on the whole and it was a much more pleasant experience than flying in high season in other years!
On the Flight
We flew with British Airways to Dubrovnik, so a relatively short flight time of around 2.5 hours. As soon as we boarded, we were offered disinfectant wipes and hand gel to clean our seat areas. If you’ve been reading the news and are expecting to have seats left between you and other parties, you may be disappointed as this certainly wasn’t the case for us. We were on an almost-full flight and there were people in almost every seat near us. The girls were great and quite happily completed their sticker books and watched the iPads with the TV shows I had pre-downloaded. There was no in-flight meal that you might have received pre-coronavirus but there was a pre-packaged snack bag brought round to each passenger. Ours contained some crisps, a biscuit and some water but the girls were offered popcorn instead of crisps. We had also taken some snacks along with us!
Most people wore their masks for the duration of the flight and it wasn’t half as bad as I had thought it might be. I had actually put some buttons on a headband and attached my mask to save my ears but didn’t find I needed to use them after all. Some people near to us seemed to find a slight “eating/drinking loophole” by taking a rather long time to consume their bag of crisps and therefore remained without a mask on for the majority of the flight but they put them back on when we started to descend. Again. once we had reached Dubrovnik airport the expectation was the same that all people had to wear a mask. There are also rules in Croatia that people must wear a mask to use public transport, and whilst they are in shops and so it didn’t feel odd.
General Advice/Tips for Flying during the Covid-19 Pandemic
- Make sure you take plenty of snacks for the airport/flight.
Very few shops/restaurants were open at the airport and given that we were flying from Heathrow T5, I don’t imagine smaller airports would be any different. We did also fly quite early in the morning (takeoff 07:50 BST) but even still, there was only really Pret or Boots that were open and both had extremely long queues.
2. Consider how comfortable you are being in an airport/flying with a mask on
All in all we had masks on for around 7.5 hours (taxi, airport, flight, airport, taxi to apartment). It wasn’t half as bad as I had imagined, but it was quite hot to say the least! We used cloth masks which a friend had made for us, but I had also purchased some from Tickle-Tots as they went around the head, as opposed to the ears. Also the children’s ones are adjustable. We took enough masks for each of us to change them every 4 hours, plus spares. Ours are washable too though so we can wash them here and reuse on the next leg of our journey.
3. Do your research about your airline/destination
I scoured the airline websites trying to work out what the expectation would be for the children to wear masks. I was obviously quite happy to comply with wearing a mask but the thought of wrestling a toddler mid-flight is horrible at the best of times, let alone with extra-prying eyes thanks to coronaphobia! BA currently (as of July 2020) is following the Gov UK advice that children under 11 are exempt but ages vary on other airlines. Whilst we encouraged our children to wear one, it was nice to know that we wouldn’t be penalised if they had a meltdown mid-flight. Similarly, Croatian rules are very similar to the UK but other destinations may have their own advice.
4. Check in online!
We always check in online or on an app anyway but this certainly made our trip through departures easier. We had to drop bags still but the queue was much quicker given that we had already checked in.
5. Try not to worry
If you’re flying with children during the pandemic, please feel comforted by the fact that all staff we encountered were extremely sympathetic about trying to get young children to wear a mask. It wasn’t a requirement that either of our children wore a mask due to their age but we still encouraged them to wear them as much as possible once we had got to the airport. If you are looking for any tips to get your younger children to wear a mask, especially as they become more commonplace then I have written a blog about this here. I’ve also written about generally travelling with children in the past. You can read it here.
All in all, the flight wasn’t half as bad as I had expected. In lots of ways, it wasn’t any different. We are currently enjoying some Croatian sunshine and we feel very safe and very welcome to be here. As I said, if you have any questions, just drop me an email at monkeyandpal@gmail.com or connect with me on Instagram. If you’re interested in travelling to Croatia, you might want to check out my Pinterest board too!
I also read this really helpful article from Flying with a Baby article several times!
