Tag Archives for united states.
While the U.S. still has a vaccine requirement for non-residents to travel here, we’re coming out the era of pandemic restrictions generally. But we’re not becoming a friendly place to travel. In fact we’re largely becoming worse.
For those who need a visa the average wait times are mind bogglingly absurd. The wait time in Mexico City? Over 500 days.
U.S. immigration deported an Australian woman after repeatedly asking her whether she’s had an abortion. They suspected her of planning to cat sit while vacationing in Canada as well as on a future visit to the U.S.
Did you know that foreigners cannot visit the United States and then make Canada or Mexico their next destination, at least if they’re from a Visa waiver country in Europe or somewhere like Australia (and not actually getting a Visa, something almost no one does)?
One Australian learned the the hard way that the rule is onward travel must be to somewhere “other than a contiguous territory or adjacent island unless they permanently reside there.”
Consider that Airbnb no longer allows positive Covid test refunds, and United Airlines no longer runs APUs during boarding and deplaning. The travel industry is moving on from its pandemic policies. And that means travelers are increasingly on their own – especially if they test positive for the virus during travel and aren’t allowed to fly home.
Requiring a negative Covid-19 test to fly to the U.S. did not stop the Omnicron variant from entering the country, and it didn’t stop the Omicron wave. Requiring testing for travel but not for anything else makes no sense at all. The antigen tests that are accepted are hardly a guarantee against a passenger carrying the virus. We aren’t pursuing an ‘eradication’ policy against Covid like China is. Barely-piecemeal efforts are largely symbolic.
But the Biden administration says lifting the testing requirement for international travel is off the table.
President Biden is announcing tonight during the State of the Union address that the U.S. is closing its airspace to Russian aircraft.
This isn’t nearly as significant to Russia as the closure of European airspace, though it does mean that Russian carriers won’t be flying to the U.S. which was already made more difficult by the closure of Canadian airspace. But check out what Russian airlines now have to do in order to fly to places like Cancun.
The U.K. has recognized that a travel testing requirement didn’t provide benefit during the pandemic. It makes little sense in the U.S. where the virus is spreading widely already, and where vaccine boosters are widely available. The specific testing rules in place make even less sense since they don’t universally catch infections. But rules tend to outlive their usefulness even as political narrative. When will U.S. rules change, then?
The federal government’s ‘free Covid-19 tests’ are now arriving. None of these tests work for travel to enter the U.S. on their own. However it’s possible to make some of them – including the ones that I received – work if you know what to look for.
The second U.S. case of the Omicron variant has been identified and it tells us something we all should have already known: It’s spreading in the U.S. It was here early than we thought. It’s not just something to keep out of the country.
In the face of the new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa, the U.S. is banning travel from South Africa along with Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi.
This only applies to non-citizens (U.S. citizens can’t spread the new variant?). And it doesn’t start until Monday (we’ve asked the virus to wait before spreading because of the holiday weekend).
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
