What it’s like to fly during Covid-19

We’ve been home from our family vacation to British Columbia for less than a week now and the questions that I get asked the most from friends and family are “how was it at the airport? what was it like on the plane? and was everyone wearing a mask?”

To give some context, our family vacation (flight, car rental and our accommodations) had been planned, booked and paid in full for several months before Covid-19 had us all on a travel lock down in March.

With only 12 days of vacation time available, we didn’t have the option to drive from Ontario to British Columbia so the decision on whether to cancel or go ahead was at the mercy of Air Transat and whether they would resume their flights again in time after their temporary Covid shut down.

After waiting patiently for 3 months, Air Transat finally made the decision at the end of June to resume flights on July 23rd (the day before our original flight was scheduled to leave on the 24th). Phew…talk about cutting it close.

*Air Transat did give us the option to cancel our flights at no charge with a future travel credit if we wanted to postpone our vacation after their restart*

After a very stressful start to the year, the kids missing school and their friends, the passing of Joe’s dad from cancer at the end of June and the fact that we aren’t in a high risk category for Covid-19, we decided to go ahead with our vacation for some much needed time away as a family.

Here’s what our experience was like at the airports and on our flights:

Navigating the Toronto and Vancouver Airports

Have you ever watched a movie where civilization is in peril and places that are normally packed with people are empty? This is what it felt like walking into and around the two largest airports in Canada!

The kids first question when we entered the Vancouver airport was “where is everybody and did we go in the right entrance?” To me, I imagined that this is what it would feel like if the television show The Walking Dead was real.

We checked in for our flights and paid for our bags in advance online like we always do and when we went to the counter to grab our bag tags and receive our boarding passes, there were only a few people in line ahead of us.

We were asked a few questions about whether we had any symptoms, if we had been exposed to anyone with Covid-19 and if we had been banned from flying in the past 14 days due to Covid-19.

The process took only a few minutes longer than a usual flight check in pre-Covid.

In Toronto they took our temperature via a contact free forehead thermometer to make sure that we didn’t have a fever. In Vancouver, just before going through security, we were required to have a full body temperature scan.

Going through security was the same as usual (except with less people in line). It’s too bad that it wasn’t like this all of the time.

Once we purchased our snacks at Tim Hortons (and a Starbucks Chai Tea Latte for me) in Toronto we sat at the socially distanced table and waited for our flight to board.

In Vancouver the seats in the boarding gate waiting area had these signs posted every few seats.

I was a bit worried about our 10 year old and her ability to wear a face covering the entire time at the airport and on the flight – approx 8 hours straight – but she was fine with it.

Every airport and airline staff member was wearing a mask and 80-90% of passengers in the airport were also wearing masks. We did take them off briefly when we ate our snacks but because of the emptiness of the airport and every second table and seats being blocked off, we were at least 15-20 feet away from any other passenger in both airports.

Mask Tip #1: I purchased a caribiner for each of our backpacks to keep our masks attached so that we didn’t lose them, they didn’t drop on the floor and we didn’t have to dig around in the bottom of the backpack to find them.

Mask Tip #2: We purchased a neck gaiter for our 10 year old to use instead of a mask so that she didn’t have to wear mask straps around her ears while she was also wearing her glasses at the same time to avoid getting sore ears.

Flying with Air Transat and Air Canada

When the avoid all non-essential travel advisory was put in place in Canada in March, Air Transat temporarily grounded their flights for 112 days. Our flight from Toronto to Vancouver was one of the first six flights out that night on their first day back in operation.

The boarding process was the same as pre-Covid. Passengers are boarded in groups based on where they sit on the plane – passengers in the back of the plane board first and passengers at the front of the plane are the last to board.

When standing in line, everyone was respectful of the 6 foot distancing rule and there was tape on the floor indicating where to stand.

When it was time to show our photo ID and boarding passes, we were asked to lower our mask briefly to confirm our identity. Airline staff were wearing gloves and masks and our flight attendants had masks, gloves and face shields on for the duration of our flights.

Because our original flight date with Air Transat was changed from July 24th to July 23rd, Joe wasn’t able to get an extra day off of work so we booked him a flight out the next day with Air Canada. He was able to fly back with us on August 3rd on the original Air Transat Flight.

His experience with Air Canada was similar to ours with Air Transat, but Air Canada went a step above and sent him an email notification a few days before indicating that his flight was full and giving him the option to cancel and/or re-book on a different flight with no penalty. He decided to continue on with the flight so that he didn’t lose any more vacation time with us.

On all of our flights, in addition to the typical flight attendant safety briefing, were were told about the travel care package they were about to hand out to us and the cleaning procedures and air filters that each airline had put in place that complied with Air Transportation Covid regulations.

There was limited food service on board and knowing that in advance we brought our own snacks and beverages as well as sanitizer and wipes.

With almost all passengers wearing masks on the flight, it was strangely quiet – it’s hard to talk, take bites of food and drink beverages when you need to wear a mask.

Overall, we felt confident about the Covid-19 measures put in place at both the Toronto and Vancouver airports as well as with Air Canada and Air Transat. If we had more vacation time this summer we wouldn’t hesitate to book another flight and take advantage of lower priced airfare to travel somewhere else in Canada.

We’d love to hear if you have any vacations still planned for the rest of 2020? Would you feel safe flying within Canada? Let us know in the comments section below.