0

As many flights are cancelled due to COVID-19, it can be sometimes difficult to find a flight between a given country becomes available. How can I get notified when a flight between from a given airport to a given country becomes available within the next n days (where n can be defined by the user, e.g. n=7)? Or otherwise when the soonest available flight changes its date?


I have crossposted the question at:

1 Answer 1

10

Assuming you want to fly home (and you should only be trying to fly home), your best bet is the consular staff of your country. For example, various Canadian government agencies are tweeting about flights to Canada from specific airports. Here's a snapshot of the feed of travel.gc.ca:

twitter feed

In addition to following your country (and subsets of it like the "Canada in Lebanon" and "Canada in Singapore" accounts you see in the screenshot) you should have registered with your government so they can email, call or text you, and you should probably have called your embassy or consulate for advice about how to get home.

If you aren't trying to get home, but are trying to reach a relative or someone else who really needs you, these same sources are the ones that are likely to help you. If you think your travel need isn't urgent enough to get an embassy involved, then stop trying to travel. People are desperately trying to get home, to reunite families, to get out while they can. If you've just always wanted to see a particular place, now is not the time.

Bottom line: make sure at least one qualified human who is connected to your target country knows you're trying to get there, then start monitoring the heck out of airlines, airports, and those embassies and consulates on all the social media you can think of, and getting yourself on group chats and multi emails and facebook groups, so you'll be notified when there's a chance to go. And be ready to go when the chance comes.

1
  • Consular staff may be useful when it comes to chartered aircraft that their governments have specifically organised to fly people home. And in many cases they may be able to advise on the latest travel restrictions. (But I wouldn’t necessarily trust their information is more up to date than a more recent contradictory report.) But I would be surprised if they would really be of more help than hinderance in arranging transport on commercially available flights. It just doesn’t seem like their area of expertise at all. Maybe you have a lot more positive experiences than me with embassies. :-)
    – Calchas
    Apr 6, 2020 at 4:46

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .