Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2020 8:48am
Hi Steve,
We flew to Alicante from Gatwick on 1st July, came back on 9th July - Easyjet - All good, will add some points here:
Flight Gatwick to Alicante : Face masks in airport, no coffee/refreshment shops open at Gatwick. In general smooth trip. Face masks on flight - apart from when drinking water that Easyjet staff provided. Flight arrived 20 mins early. All in all an ok experience considering COVIT.
All good at Alicante airport, police everywhere - they looked at us when we came through arrivals to see if they could see any signs of sickness etc, we had to complete forms before we left (not sure if you still need to, but check). I had our forms with passports and they collected them at Alicante. A form saying where you would be staying etc.
Flight Alicante to Gatwick : Alicante Airport coffee/refreshment shops open, which was nice. Nice experience all in all. Easyjet were now serving limited food/drinks, few alcoholic drinks. Flight arrived 20 mins early (probably not much air traffic).
The only issue we had is the following:
Before we left to fly back to UK, I checked on Easyjet website and Gov.uk to see about self isolating regulations in UK, I knew that they had been lifted, but we had been away 9 days, and needed to check. The isolation rules when arriving in UK had been lifted. BUT. When we arrived at Gatwick, we were all stopped and asked to complete an ONLINE FORM ONLY, no paper copies available. You also MUST have an email address (some elderly people on our flight did not know what an email address was) !! You could not enter the UK without having completed this online form, receiving a reference no. to your email address, and showing this reference number at passport control.
If we had of known this, we would have completed the forms online before travelling, so do check this. The form was basically where have you been, where are you staying (in order to track people if anybody on the plane had CV19). We were there over an hour completing these forms and obtaining the reference number. I felt so sorry for the people who did not have an email address, the police assisted and helped the elderly couple set up an email address.
And so, all in all, a very smooth flight there and back, just the online form, as we had no prior knowledge of this. Do complete the form before flying back to UK and ensure you get your reference number to show at Passport control.
It is now 18th July, and so not sure if the form is still necessary, but please check. I will check later as we are flying out again at end of month.
Hope this is helpful,
Best Poppy