Three weeks ago we set off for Sydney airport with a suitcase, masks and a huge sense of relief that Queensland borders hadn’t closed yet. We had tickets to fly to Townsville where we were relocating for a school term. This was before the second wave hit Melbourne and at the time I was hopeful we’d be able to get back into Asia around September. Now our stay here on Magnetic Island will be for a bit longer. Such is a global pandemic.
I was a little nervous about flying – but I had less pandemic nerves than fear of flying nerves.
We’d flown home from Japan on a Qantas flight in late March after the Government had said to come home, and all was fine. And now, as long as everyone did the right thing I felt we would be okay.
I’m usually a pretty nervous flier, but over the past four years or so we’ve flown around once a month or more around Asia or to and from Australia so I was so used to it at least. But after not being on a plane since we came back to Australia in March I was nervous. And I was also worried about the pilots’ skill level, the maintenance and just general pandemic flying ability. You know, standard nervous flier stuff.
Arriving at the airport I was surprised to see that most people were not wearing masks. In fact, I only spotted one couple wearing them at check in. We had ours but we didn’t put them on. I would have if everyone else was or if we’d been told we needed to or that masks were the best line of defence (as we’re being told now). But at that time we just did what everyone else did.
Check in was easy – standard really, the same process, I paid for our extra baggage and we went through security and I grabbed a coffee on the other side. We went straight to our gate and took a seat, mindful to not sit too close to people and putting bags on either side of us. There were social distancing signs and everyone was pretty good about it.
Two things I noticed: just about everyone looked grumpy. I don’t know if this is just normal Sydney facials as we’ve been away so long, or if everyone was stressed out.
Secondly there are a LOT of businesses that have had to close at the airport. Of course – there’s not much through traffic anymore but it’s so sad to see shops closed with signs that they’ve had to shut because of Covid.
It was time to board and so we put on our masks and waited until the queue subsided before we went on. As we walk up we picked up our little amenities pack…but instead of a headset inside were masks and disinfectant wipes. We got on, wiped off our seats and sat down.
There was nothing too different about the flight really, only that we wore masks and there was no in-flight entertainment. It was a short flight and I guess usually we would have been offered a snack so we didn’t miss much really not having food service, and we were given water.
On arrival we left the plane and queued with masks on to pass through the Queensland arrival process. I’d completed and printed our arrival forms, and some people had them on their phones too. It was all very simple and probably took about another half an hour.
All good, we were in! We took the shuttle to the ferry terminal and set off for our new home on Magnetic Island.
All in all, I think the flight process is really good and I did feel safe the whole time. It’s going to be a long time til we are flying anywhere now, and so I’m happy to have had a little taste of freedom in the sky.
