Traveling in the coronavirus era

Emirates airlines

Life as we know it is about to change. The Covid-19 coronavirus is now well established as the "one in a hundred" year pandemic. The last such pandemic was exactly 102 years ago when the 1918 flu pandemic devastated the world. This Covid-19 is well on its way to becoming as bad, if not worse, than the 1918 flu pandemic. As soon as it was established that the Covid-19 virus is spread by people before they show clinical signs, it was pretty obvious that this was going to be serious. The first reports from China indicated that the mortality rate was not that high. There was a reported 2% mortality rate from China. Yet in Italy, the current mortality rate is around 8.5%. This is significantly higher than the reports from China. Could it have been that China was not 100% honest with the rest of the world? Very likely!

This virus is obviously going to radically change the travel industry. This will impact everything, from the airlines, the air crew, hotels, restaurants, tour guides, curio sellers and so on and so on.

I had a work related trip pretty much at the start of the world-wide spread. My wife (Marie) was really not keen that I go on the trip. It is not a trivial thing to cancel a work related trip. So, based on my understanding of epidemiology, I guessed that I could get in and out of the work trip before the "pawpaw hit fan". It ended up being pretty much touch and go! When I left there was one case of Covid-19 in South Africa, none in Kenya and 3 in Brazil .- so pretty good odds. My first thoughts that this was not such a good idea (the traveling) was when I landed in Dubai. The flight from Joburg to Dubai was quite empty. Had no-one next to me - so good social distancing! No problem so far. We landed in Terminal A and my flight was from Terminal C. There is a bus from terminal A to terminal C. I was the only one on the bus - no risk of getting the virus. Then 5 or 6 Asians got onto the bus with their face masks! Level of fear goes up! Anyway, the bus was pretty empty and they were on the opposite ends of the bus. I had upgraded my long flight from Dubai to Sao Paulo, so I was in the top of the plane with much fewer people. I was very happy about this, because as we were boarding there was a massive in-streaming of Chinese people all with their face masks on.

Now this is how to fly on a long 15 hour flight

In Brazil, the first few meetings went well. Towards the end of the week, the number of cases in Brazil had climbed to over 50. Epidemiologists have found that once there are 50 cases in a country, the numbers increase exponentially (in other words - increase rapidly almost doubling every 3 or so days). Two meetings in the last part of the trip to Brazil were cancelled for fear of the virus.

After leaving Brazil, I traveled on my trusted Emirates again. This flight was also pretty empty, so no-one close to me on the long flight. All the plans are coming together. I had a very long stopover in Dubai, so I booked into the airport hotel. Excellent service. There was someone to meet me as I climbed off the plane and she whisked me through the security check and up to the lobby of the hotel. It was like the end had already happened! Just the hotel reception staff and me. The first real indication that all was not normal was when I went to the business class lounge to get something to eat. I have done a post on sticking to the same airline and building up your miles. One such perk is access to the lounges in Dubai. The business class lounge in terminal A was closed and we needed to go to the First class lounge. There were so few people at the terminal, that they had closed the Business class lounge!

Airport hotel in Dubai

Has the end already come?

The next morning, my flight to Kenya was also not very full. When we arrived in Kenya, were were hearded off to a different remote terminal.We were all crushed together into a small space to get our health check. The ideal place to spread any virus!

In Kenya, all but one of our meetings were cancelled. I have also previously posted about the benefits of having a trusted travel agent in your team. Well this is just one such a time. Pointless staying in Kenya for a work trip if all of the meetings were cancelled. Also by this time the virus had gone rampant. There were already talks of South Africa closing its boarders and airports. Must get home as soon as possible. My very trusted travel agent - Jessica Cameron (jessica.cameron@travelcounsellors.co.za),  started working on getting me home as soon as possible. This is when I really started to notice the impact of what was going on. On my airport shuttle bus, there was a guy from the hotel who had been stuck for 4 days already. He was trying to get back to Switzerland. His flights had been cancelled four times already and no-one was answering any of the many telephone lines for the airline, anywhere in the world. In desperation he was going to the airport to see if he could find someone from the airline to talk to! The joys of having a trusted travel agent who spent most of the day sorting out my trip home!Thank you Jessica!

Air crew with masks

The flight from Nairobi was full - in fact overbooked by 30 seats! The Emirates aircrew all had an addition to their uniforms. A nice blue face mask! Everyone on the flight was desperately trying to get back home!

Again, the Business class lounge was in Terminal A was closed and we had to use the first class lounge,. I was flying back on my normal 04:40 flight from Dubai. We were the last flight out that night. Normally there is no break in the flights taking off from Dubai. I also noted the flight information boards. Normally, if you flight was more that 3 hours away, it would not even be on the board. Now there were flights on the board for the following day! Emirates had obviously already cut their flights back dramatically.

Once in South Africa, we had the mandatory temperature check - not that this does any good as people spread the disease before they have a temperature! There was no-one from the plane going to any line at passport control other than the South African line. Everyone desperate to get home.

Deserted lounge in Dubai

I had another 4 trips planned for the first half of the year. Obviously, these are all now on hold!

Really glad to be home!
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