PARIS (AP) – The security officer pointing to the thermometer barely glanced, but wished the traveler a “Happy Holidays”. Luggage packaging was dreaming of better times, and the list of departing flights didn’t even fill a video screen.
This is the Christmas 2020 journey, a pale shadow of previous holiday crushes, with less than 100 masked and sanitized passengers lining up for a flight from Johannesburg to Paris, hoping it won’t be canceled at the last minute. Covid-19 has just moved and many flights from South Africa are banned.
Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport is normally solid at this time of year. Passengers usually push oversized luggage carts through lines to check-in counters, followed by several long lines for security and again for immigration. Even the business lounges are overcrowded and can take 20 minutes to pay for a free bottle of wine.
Not this Christmas.
Registration is effortless. It is not necessary to show evidence of a COVID-19 test. There are no safety lines, where the old X-ray machines have been replaced by a high-tech full-body scanner. Just a quick temperature check and send a follow-up form to a health official.
The international terminal is empty. Most stores are closed, except for the perfume, alcohol and tobacco store with no fees (but no profit), a sunglasses franchise, and an unlisted electronics store.
Boarding is easy, as it should be when an aircraft has a capacity of less than 40%.
Passengers wearing designer cloth masks are politely asked to take them off and wear them not so fashionable, but universally recognized as an effective light blue surgical mask.
Ten hours later, after a smooth flight over the African continent in the dark of night, the 15-year-old Boeing 777 landed in a typical winter fog at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris.
There, despite the very early hour, hundreds line up at the transit office. With London, a popular European transit hub, being an empty area for many, travelers returned to Paris or Frankfurt as a European transit point.
For those whose final destination is Paris, passengers are oriented towards immigration, depending on the origin of their flight. Proof of a negative COVID-19 test is required, but social distances are not necessarily observed.
On the edge, it is raining, dark, and the taxi driver is inaudible, because there is a thick sheet of plastic that separates him from the passengers.
It is now past 6 in the morning, and the condition has been lifted over Paris – the highways are packed.
Happy Holidays 2020!