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.