My PCR test results have come back early; will they still be valid if my flight is delayed?

Q My PCR test results have come back much quicker than expected. It leaves me 71 hours until arrival in Spain. If the flight is delayed, what happens then?

JW

A I have concerns about your situation for three reasons – none of them to do with a possible flight delay (I will come to that issue shortly).

First: I infer that you are unvaccinated. Only people aged 12 or over who have not completed a course of vaccinations are required to take a Covid test when travelling to Spain. However, some travellers mistakenly believe that they need a test to board a plane from the UK. This is understandable given the false claims made by some of the testing services that are on the government’s list of providers. One states: “Fit to Fly test required. Suitable for most flights leaving the UK.” I have asked for this claim to be removed and will be pursuing similar false assertions. If you feel you have been misled by the testing company then you can ask for the cost of your test to be refunded.

Second, the clear rule on the timing of tests according to the Spanish government is “sampling within the previous 72 hours to arrival in Spain”. It appears you may have taken a test earlier – in which case it will not be valid anyway.

Third, I am concerned that you took a PCR test. These are expensive and slow. While cheap and fast rapid-antigen tests are not acceptable for UK visitors to Spain, “Lamp” tests definitely are. These give results within 90 minutes, so you can (for example) take a test on your day of departure.

But assuming my concerns are misplaced – that you did need a test and you took it within 72 hours of your expected arrival in Spain – I do not foresee any problems if there is a moderate delay of your flight of a couple of hours. Were the wait to be significantly longer, then a further test might be required (which you should be able to do at the airport); the airline that causes the delay may be liable for the cost.

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Q I’ve booked a short break in Mallorca. I am fully vaccinated. Can you just remind me of the formalities? I’m a little nervous I may fail to jump through one of the hoops correctly and thus ruin the holiday. Any guidance would be gratefully received.

Name withheld

A Travelling out to Spain is the easy part for fully vaccinated travellers from the UK. You fill out the Spanish passenger locator form, which is only mildly annoying (for example you must include a “State/Province” when the UK has neither, but a county will do), and the first or only address where you will be staying.

Take proof of vaccination on your NHS app or, even better, on the NHS Covid pass letter, which you can apply for in England or Scotland online; it takes about a week to arrive. Probably the most interest that anyone will take in it is the airline when you are flying out (they get fined if they bring in passengers who are not correctly documented).

Coming home is the complicated and stressful part; I used to travel regularly behind the iron curtain prior to the collapse of communism, and the bureaucracy was far easier then. But follow these steps and you will be fine.

Whatever ministers recommend, a negative result from a cheap and swift lateral-flow test is fine for travel to the UK. It can be taken on the day of departure to the UK or on any of the preceding three days. I recommend having the test performed at a pharmacy or an airport test centre for maximum accuracy; it could cost as much as €40 (£34) but there is a fair amount of competition.

Next, you must pre-book a PCR test for the day you arrive back in the UK, or one of the two following days. I always get this done at the airport on arrival, usually paying £69. The alternative is a home test, which through a reliable company may be £10 or £15 less. But I believe a clinically administered test taken immediately, with the result typically known within 24 hours, maximises the public health benefit.

Finally, armed with a reference number, you can complete the maddening UK passenger locator form. I always save this until the last night of the trip to avoid spoiling too much of the holiday. Once you have an email confirmation from the government, you are good to go home.

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Q I’m supposed to fly from London to Trabzon with Turkish Airlines on 30 August. Originally I was transiting through Ankara. Just before the 14-day compensation mark kicked in, the first leg was cancelled. I’ve spent the past few days trying to rebook. Finally this morning I received confirmation that I’d been rebooked on a flight from London to Trabzon, transiting this time through Istanbul. Aside from the stress, that was fine with me.

But I’ve just this evening received an email saying that the London to Istanbul flight has been “disrupted”. (It’s been cancelled, but perhaps they're wording it like that because compensation would be due now, given the date.) I was offered new timings. The tricky part: the flight from Heathrow lands at Istanbul airport, but the second leg of the journey is from Sabiha Gokcen airport, 75km away. Not only would that be massively inconvenient, but it’s just a two-hour layover. Do you have any advice, and am I due compensation?

Peter L

A Any airline that cancels a flight from the UK is legally obliged to offer an alternative – including on another carrier if that would get you to your final destination on the southeast shore of the Black Sea more punctually. As you indicate, if the cancellation is made less than two weeks in advance of travel, there is also an obligation to offer compensation (for a trip of this length, £350).

Many flights to and from Turkey are being cancelled because the country remains on the UK’s “red list” – requiring 11 nights of hotel quarantine on return to Britain. This status is depressing demand dramatically.

In terms of the airport, I imagine what has happened on this occasion is simply a foul-up: Turkish Airlines has 11 flights from its main hub at Istanbul airport to Trabzon on 30 August. I hope you can swiftly get it changed in advance – if not, the ticket desk at Heathrow should help.

Don’t, though, pin your hopes on compensation. It is not payable if you are told of the cancellation at least a week in advance and will reach your final destination less than two hours after the original arrival time. Alternatively, the airline may claim the cancellation is caused by “extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken”. It may take a legal test case to decide whether or not red-list status constitutes “extraordinary circumstances”.

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Q The big travel story here in Northern Ireland is a whole series of cancellations by Ryanair and Jet2 from Belfast in the autumn. I thought travel was supposed to be getting easier. Airlines and holiday companies are supposed to be desperate for customers. So why would they cancel flights and holidays to the disappointment of travellers, and hand back cash?

Name supplied

A The peak holiday season is nearing an end. In normal times July and August are when airlines make handsome profits, to offset the losses that they typically suffer during the rest of the year.

All the budget airlines were hoping for a profitable autumn, with pent-up demand from people who are not tied to school holidays. But with continued government travel restrictions – especially the expensive and onerous testing requirements, and fears of “red list” ratings for popular destinations – this surge in bookings simply isn’t materialising.

I am seeing all the budget airlines cancelling trips in order to avoid losing even more cash.

On a route such as Belfast to Alicante or Menorca, the cost to the airline of the round trip is at least £30,000: for fuel, crew, ground handling, air-traffic control charges, wear and tear on the aircraft, and so on.

The airlines may have sold a fair number of seats, but they will typically be at fares below the average they need to break even on a flight. In normal times they can afford to do that because, closer to departure, they expect more passengers to come forward and to be prepared to pay higher fares.

I infer from the latest wave of cancellations that the numbers simply do not add up, with little prospect of improvement. Were the trips to go ahead, the airline would be losing thousands. So it is better from their point of view to cancel and hand back the cash.

So long as they make cancellations at least two weeks in advance, they need not pay compensation. Under the rules covering air passengers’ rights, they are required to tell travellers that they can be transferred (at the cancelling airline’s expense) to another flight, but it appears that obligation is rarely spelt out. In any event, on a “niche” route such as Belfast to Menorca, the chances of there being a feasible alternative are low.

Airlines hate making cancellations and disappointing passengers, but I am afraid that until travel restrictions ease, they will keep having to do so.

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