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Is there an easy, systematic and / or reliable way to know what the covid-related conditions are, for flying to an arbitrary country, at an arbitrary time?

I'm specifically looking to fly from UK to USA in February 2023. However, when I came to ask my question, and searched existing questions, it is clear that many people are asking this same question, with the only variations being departure place, destination and time of travel.

When one tries to find out information, either from airline websites or government official sites, the information can be out-of-date or obfuscated and difficult to parse out. Particularly on the difference between "advice" and "requirement".

For example, travelling between UK and Ireland is 100% test-free, vaccine-free, no-nothing. It's like pre-covid. But booking on RyanAir still shows pages such as "Have your covid declaration ready." Luckily both gov.uk and gov.ie are quite clear about dropped requirements. Not all government sites are as easy to navigate.

So I thought I would ask this question for the general case:

  • How to easily and reliably know what you do or don't need to do?
  • Is there a centralised place for this info?
  • Is there a canonical website / URL to visit for a given destination?
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  • Do note that no website is going to be able to reliably predict the future. While covid restrictions are more stable now than in earlier phases of the pandemic, they have often changed on relatively short notice, and nobody can predict with certainty if things will change between now and February (or some other future date). The best resources you can possibly hope to find will tell you the current requirements for travel today, and possibly any future changes which have already been decided and announced. Nobody can give you a list of decisions that have not been made yet.
    – mlc
    Commented Nov 7, 2022 at 23:35

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Yes, there is such a centralized system, it's called Timatic and here's how you can get access to it:

Ordinary Traveller: How to use Timatic?

Timatic is not quite infallible, but it's what the airlines themselves use, so if Timatic says no, you're not boarding the flight -- even if you should actually be able to.

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  • This looks awesome! Thank you! I tried the Timatic link in the other question. It's via United Airlines. I'm travelling via British Airways, for which I didn't find a Timatic link. I guess there's no way to know if I can trust it, except to try it.
    – Stewart
    Commented Nov 7, 2022 at 10:44
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    Here is a link accessible by regular humans: iatatravelcentre.com/…
    – Hilmar
    Commented Nov 7, 2022 at 12:44
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    @Stewart It doesn't matter which site you use, the underlying database is always the same.
    – lambshaanxy
    Commented Nov 7, 2022 at 14:54

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