Gathering information in advance - via a Facebook Group

At the end of the previous post, I made reference to a Facebook group that I came across by accident. Bear in mind that this written several weeks before MIQ (Managed Isolation Quarantine) and the MIQ system has come under a lot of fire, generally justified, the majority of flak aimed at the difficulty of actually grabbing a place.

Having grabbed my spot, I was over that major hurdle, but contributors to the group were a mix of those struggling to find a spot, those advising on how to find a spot, some actually in MIQ, some having completed their 14 days, and those like me, gleaning any information we possibly could in advance, as the scout motto of ‘Be Prepared’, still holds good - for me anyway.

This is the link to the Facebook page - at the time of writing, a staggering 6.4k members:

NZ MIQ Facebook Group link

So what have I learned so far?

The most important and somewhat worrying factor is that until your aircraft lands, you have no idea where your MIQ hotel will be.

As the majority of flights will be arriving in Auckland – and the chances are that the majority of passengers will also be from the Greater Auckland region, the majority of MIQ hotels are also in the Auckland region, but so far, passengers have been billeted in Auckland, Rotorua, Wellington and down in the South Island – Christchurch.

Facing a 26 hour flight from the UK, then being flown to Christchurch or taken by coach to Rotorua (about a 4 hour journey), is not something to look forward to.  What makes that even worse is that quarantine is exactly 14 days, to the hour – 336 hours. So being released at 8am in Auckland even if returned to the airport, is one thing, but being released at 8am in Christchurch or Rotorua effectively extends the quarantine by maybe half a day or more.

Again, being prepared, helps, so if the worse-case scenario is a distant hotel, so be it.  The downside of that is that if local, you can have personal items dropped off and delivered to the hotel.      

Then we come to the experiences at the various hotels.  It appears that some have different rules from others and also different facilities, especially around the exercise.

Booking a ‘slot’ then being confined to a small yard - or having it cancelled at short notice doesn’t augur too well, whilst others have the luxury of a reasonable garden area and plenty of exercise opportunities. Some seem to have hired exercise bikes for the duration or embarked on a yoga and exercise regime.

Regardless, you are confined to your bubble, so if travelling on your own, that is it.

Some of the tips and experiences of others may prove to be invaluable, others just plain common sense.

One of the useful tips was that as the 3 meals a day delivered to your room, come in cardboard containers with usually, plastic knives and forks, packing your own cutlery and maybe a plate of some sort may not be a bad idea.

Needless to say, several complained about meals being cold – they are left outside your door and I suppose that if you are on an upper floor and the last to get the meal, it would be cold. Some enterprising soul used the hair drier and others were fortunate enough to have a microwave. Fingers crossed on that score, as I do prefer my hot meals to be hot.  In fact, a pet hate of mine is getting a hot meal on a cold plate in a café or restaurant.

Discussion on the page can be very lively and naturally enough, a lot of comment about the need for the full 14 day’s isolation if doubly vaccinated. Needless to say, I have my own opinions on that score - and those who know me well wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Posts between now and the actual start of my MIQ stint may be very infrequent, but once it kicks in, there will be a daily post – probably with pics.

Pre-planning for 14 days MIQ

Having secured an MIQ spot, within 48 hours, and before an MIQ voucher could be issued, the flight number (from a drop down list) had to be checked and the booking number input. Cue an email to our wonderful Travel Agent, Caroline.

 

Back in 2020 when Covid first hit, one of the very earliest local casualties was Caroline’s branch of YouTravel, in Birkenhead (Auckland). Her second in command, Rachel, had looked after us so well for several years, but not only did the retail branch have to close, but Rachel’s job went too. Devastating for them but we opted to continue to use Caroline as our TA, as we have found that although we can book fights and cruises on line, there are often some advantages to using a TA, especially with re-booking flights.

 

I’d already given Caroline my MIQ password, as she had also been chasing spaces for me and sure enough, by the following morning, she had not only sorted the flight booking but had input the details for me into the MIQ site and the voucher was issued.

 

What a relief that was.

 

Covid’s impact had been such that the rules and procedures for several countries changed almost daily, so constantly checking for changes was important.  My initial travel plans were via Los Angeles, but as the UK/USA didn’t exactly have an open door, the plans were switched to out and back via Singapore.

 

It wasn’t long before I realised that flying back to Singapore for a planned 2 night stopover, wasn’t going to be possible, due to travel restrictions ex-UK, so the only option was to fly straight through with just a transit stop in Singapore.  With all my flights to and from the UK over the last 38 years, I have never ever flown straight through. I need a break for daylight, fresh air and a decent bed, but if it was the only option, so be it.

 

Then another change to Singapore’s requirements, threw another spanner in the works. As NZ was deemed a ‘Green List’ country, the plan was to fly to Singapore from NZ, have a two day break, then carry on to the UK, arriving 5:55am September 5^th. Singapore then made a ruling that you had a Covid test on arrival Went straight to your hotel and a wait of up to 48 hours for the test result. Not exactly an attractive prospect, so another flight change and another straight through flight.

 

Once again, Caroline to the rescue and a (tiny) bonus for my wife, as my outward flight, now two days later than originally.

 

Then I found a Facebook page for NZ MIQ returnees and another chapter began.  

 

    

Trying to Book an MIQ space

For NZ Citizens or Residents, it sounds simple enough. Register on the NZ Government’s MIQ (Managed Isolation Quarantine) website.

 1) click on the date your flight arrives from the published 3 or 4 month calendar

       2) input the flight details

      3) arrange the flight

      4) input the flight booking reference

      5) get a voucher issued to reserve your spot

      6) job done

The reality was somewhat different.

 Stage one was straightforward, the usual profile creation with passport details etc., no different from any other profile and password creation.  This was going to be a solo trip, so just the one name in the system.

 What follows is my own experience and others will have found it either easier, more difficult or impossible.

 Central to my own trip were the dates around the Goodwood Revival meeting, September 17/18/19. Arrival in the UK therefore couldn’t be later than 16^th nor the  return flight earlier than the 20^th.  The original flight out of the UK was therefore planned to be September 2^nd, flying out of the UK 21^st.

 Having registered, the first job was then to look at the calendar and click on September 23^rd, the arrival date back in NZ. But, it was greyed out, meaning that there was no spot available, nor 24^th or indeed, any date right up to the end of October, which was as far as the calendar went.

 My heart sank. But it wasn’t quite as simple as that. To actually get to the calendar was a frustrating waste of time in itself.

  1)   Log in

        2)   But first of all, prove that you weren’t a robot, by clicking on the ‘captcha’ check box.

        3)  Did that get you in? No. Up popped a grid of pictures and you had to click on every grid that had either hills, steps, traffic lights, bridges, boats, tractors, bicycles, buses or crosswalks. Different every time.

       4) Sometimes, identifying them from the small, grainy, poor definition images wasn’t so easy, so often, clicking ‘verify’, another grid would pop up

       5)  This time, it would be similar, OR, you had to click on each relevant image, wait for the screen to refresh, keep doing it until there were no more images showing.

      6)  This again may have had to be repeated  - not always, but sometimes.

     7)  This would then take you to a page where you had to click a check box to confirm whether or not there were disability issues.

     8)  Below that, the calendar, which started off at June (I first went in mid-June), then you scrolled to July, then August and for me, September.

     9)   Nothing, so on to October, which was as far as it went.

    10)  Nothing.

    11) So, click ‘Refresh’ and go back, often to step 2 or 3.

    12)   This was done many, many times in succession and very rarely, a half suitable date may crop up, but by the time I’d clicked on it and once again clicked yet another ‘captcha’ box, the date had gone.

 This went on many, many times, morning, noon and night, without success. Despondency was setting in and according to my wife, I was getting grumpy, though I wasn’t aware of it - other than when at the screen.

 Then, one day, Sunday October 10^th cropped up. Not ideal and it would have meant changing not just flights, but hotel and car rental bookings. It also meant I’d be away a few days longer, which naturally enough, did not please my wife at all.

 Having jumped up and down with glee, the euphoria was short lived.  A place would be held for 48 hours only, but the usual Singapore Airlines flight wasn’t showing. In fact, only three flights were showing. One each from Chile, Japan and China.  I thought that maybe there had been a mistake as Singapore Airlines has at least one if not two flights a day arriving from Singapore.  I was pretty sure I’d checked there was a flight just two days earlier.

I dashed off an email to MIQ and their unhelpful reply was to board one of the three flights on their list!

Either I was mistaken, or Singapore canned that flight, as sure enough, there was a flight arriving 11pm on the Saturday night, but nothing on the Sunday, one of only two days in a 14 day window, with no flights!  Now even though it would take until after midnight to get to an MIQ facility, the rules were quite solid, the SCHEDULED arrival time was the only acceptable date, so sadly, the reserved date lapsed and the search started all over again.

 At this point, I was getting quite angry (unusual for me!) that I was spending several non-productive hours a day on the MIQ site.  By profession, I am a qualified Productivity Specialist with 45 years’ experience of either installing, challenging or modifying systems, and this really rankled, as not only was the system time consuming, but there was no waitlist option either.

 Day by day, there was no luck at all and I’d even given my Travel Agent my password and she was also looking several times day, plus asking around her colleagues in the industry if they could help. No luck.

 This daily ritual was getting me down, as I really didn’t want to cancel this trip, but as the days ticked over, it was looking more and more dubious.

 There was an article on the TV News where a smart business woman had put feelers out and was prepared to pay $100 or $150 for someone to secure a slot for her and someone in Bangladesh managed it. A small price to pay considering the loss of income if doing it yourself. The news a week or two later, was then full of instances of people doing this and as at last night (July 11^th), the price had risen to over $1250.  Tonight, double that.  But I’m jumping ahead.

 By going into the website, morning noon and night, there was no obvious time when a spot might become available, and why should there be? Kiwis or residents overseas up at 3am NZ time, probably outnumbered those like me, wanting to get out and back.

 Then, July 7^th, success.

A bit of background first

As 2020, after a 7 day early February Queensland cruise was devoid of travel, it was the shortest blog I have done since I started, prior to our World Cruise in 2011!

 I must admit that March or April 2020, I thought the Covid epidemic would be under control by August, so I wasn’t too pleased that the September 2020 Goodwood Revival race meeting was cancelled, and my pre booked, pre-paid Air New Zealand flights to and from the UK had to be rolled over to 2021.

 At that time, Air NZ were flying to the UK via Los Angeles twice daily, so as LAX has always been my favourite stopover (I’m a Universal Studios, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm fan), that was what I was going to do, with a return visit to the Petersen museum in Hollywood a must see.  Then Air NZ announced that they were dropping LAX/LHR flights altogether.

 By the time it came to rolling over the booking for 2021, Virgin Atlantic had stepped in, but AIR NZ had also cut back the AKL/LAX frequency so the trip had to be reshuffled – more than once, as flight schedules changed. When I say the trip, it wasn’t just flights, but the car hire booking and hotel bookings. As 2021 progressed Covid restrictions, country by country seemed to change almost daily, but I was at least optimistic that at least the Goodwood Revival would still be on and once they announced that BRM (racing cars) were to be featured, to celebrate their 70 years, I was even more determined to be there and also catch up with family and friends, ever aware that with advancing years, the number of school friends particularly, shrinks each year. 

 When NZ and Singapore were put onto the UK’s Green list for incoming travellers, and the USA wasn’t, it made sense to switch to flying via Singapore – which in itself, caused considerable hassles for our wonderful Travel Agent, Caroline, trying to get the money back from Air NZ.

 Reading the rules for entry carefully, it seemed that a stopover in Singapore going out was possible, but the return flight, would have to be straight through, with a transit stop only in Singapore.

 Then the fun, well stress, really started.

 Returning to NZ, a 14 day stay in managed isolation/quarantine is compulsory but places are limited. Without a place in MIQ, it isn’t possible to return to NZ, even if vaccinated.

 So, the search began for an MIQ place, arriving at a suitable time.  The calendar showed the remainder of June, July, August, September and October. I was originally scheduled to arrive September 23^rd. So from early June, the search began.

 The next post will be about the hassles of trying to book an MIQ slot.