Yesterday, we went ahead and purchased airfare for this trip from United Airlines. The airfare seemed reasonably priced, and had actually gone down since the last time we looked a few weeks ago. The European Union has authorized travel to the EU for the Summer of 2021, and we thought that might drive up the airfare prices if we waited.
We are connecting through Washington Dulles International Airport on both the flight over to Zurich, Switzerland, and the flight home from Munich, Germany. Both flights are single connection flights, and thankfully, only have stops in the USA.
The airfare is not refundable, but can be changed for no change fees. If we are unable to go this year, we will look to change the trip to something in 2022 since we will have 12 months to use the cancelled tickets. If there is a fare increase, we will have to pay the difference, but if the airfare is less, we apparently get to make a donation to United Airlines, there is no refund of a lower fare difference, and no future airfare credit.
We will soon purchase our travel insurance for the trip so we have the benefit of waiving any pre-existing conditions. We are not exactly sure what the trip insurance may cover on the airfare, it may be possible to get our money back through an insurance claim if we decide not to use the tickets on a future trip.
We did end up purchasing Premium Plus seats for the two long flights across the Atlantic. Hopefully this will provide us with a little more comfort, especially on the overnight flight from Dulles to Zurich. It did not cost that more than non-restricted economy (meaning an economy fare that allows one to pick your seats), and we had watched a couple of online YouTube videos about the extra room and extra services. By the time we decided to go ahead and purchase the tickets, the business class fares had jumped up significantly from our original pricing, so we opted not to go with those higher fares on this trip. Maybe one day…..
We will start to outline a more detailed Itinerary and then start to make reservations for our accommodations. We will only pick fully refundable reservations with all of the uncertainty with travel due to Covid issues. We will also start to try and figure out what the Covid restrictions may be for the countries we plan on visiting and how that may change as the trip gets closer. We know that right now, we need to get Covid Molecular PCR tests done within 72 hours of our initial travel. There may also be testing requirements for our return to the USA. I also found that there are currently fairly strict restrictions for travel between Switzerland, Italy and Austria, as well as Germany. We can not travel to any of these countries at this time, but hopefully, restrictions will ease due to increases in vaccination rates as we go forward in time.
We have not seen any details about a Vaccine Passport for Europe, but we will also be monitoring that situation.