Flights are up in the air (no pun intended) and itâs hard to get to know much. Are people still flying out of TIA? I guess they must be if they have flights. There seems to currently no ban on people leaving?
But itâs hard to get info. about new bookings. Has anyone tried to make a booking in the last few days? Some people booked flights months ago, I guess.
It is my intention to get out of Taiwan at this time. However, I am havung second thoughts and thinking I should travel e marlier,
Because
Lockdown might be imposed
If the situation doesnât improve, fear night lead to unpredictable circumstances.
3, UK might put Taiwan on red list before 17 June, costing me about $3000 extra to get back.
So-
What happened last year? Did they close the airport? Is it likely?
2, More cases might mean it is impossible to get a PRC test. It is already difficult.
Any sign of countries around the world already downgrading Taiwan?
4
Check the TPE airport departures info. Last I saw it, there were only a handful of flights out â one to the US (SFO) via Guam and a few to China. I donât even think thereâs direct TPE to HK right now. I think even the SFO flight has been cancelled the past two days.
I just took TPE to SFO. It now has a technical stopover in Guam because, if I understood what the crew explained, foreign flight crew are no longer able to stay overnight in Taiwan. So they do a shorter flight via Guam with a Guam-based crew and then the SFO-based crew comes on board to handle the flight the rest of the way.
The technical stop makes sense. United is lucky the US owns that territory and that United claims that for their Pacific hub, but that adds quite a few hours to your flight, yes? Is there anything else flying to the US right now? When I checked I didnât see the usual LAX, ORD and Huston flights that EVA used to offer
I wonder about the demand for flights. They said they expected a full flight but it didnât look like a full flight of people in the boarding area. I couldnât see economy but business class was pretty empty.
Of course there wonât be demand if people canât get the tests they need in time.
Incidentally most of the people in the boarding area looked like locals, not foreigners.
I didnât even think to check New York. Thatâs in the wrong direction for me, but might end up being shorter in total travel time. But most US states still have cases in the hundreds per day, so TW is still safer (for now), unless fully vaccinated
This is a good example of how easy it is to misjudge risk.
When you go to the US, youâre not really going to the US as far as national COVID numbers are concerned. Youâre going to a specific place. You should look at the trends in that place compared to the place youâre in.
The positive test rate in NYC is under 2% now and there are only 405 cases/day average in a city thatâs nearly as big population wise as all of Taiwan. 85% of the people in NYC have received at least 1 vaccine dose and 86% of those who have received the vax are fully vaxxed.
Coronavirus in on the run in many places in the US. Itâs just getting started in TW.
When judging the risk, I think you have to look at the case trends, vaccination and immunity rates, hospital utilization rates, vaccine availability, etc.
What would be the purpose of the trip? Are you trying to get somewhere specific or are you trying to get anywhere to get a vaccination or something else? I think in NYC there are extremely high vaccination rates. Also, cases are in the hundreds, but in Manhattan (for example) everywhere south of harlem (minus Chinatown) seems to have almost no cases. And the rate is plummeting.
Ideally if I trek over to the US, Iâm going to see people I know, who are mostly located across the Midwest into the South. I donât think anyone I know from NY is currently there, so itâs kind of a wasted trip, other than the vaccineâŚ