COVID and the rapidly-evolving travel requirements related to it required some major adjustments to our planned summer 2021 Europe trip, substantially increasing our time spent on trip planning. I thought our experience might be useful to others so am sharing our initial experience with passe sanitaire in France.
We two flew from Seattle on Delta and landed in France on Aug 24, with passe sanitaire loaded onto our TousAntiCovid apps in our mobile phones. (We had applied on Aug 9 and received the passe’s on Aug 10).
SeaTac Airport checkin (Mon Aug 23) for 7:50am flight. Online checkin not possible as Delta needed to review our documentation. At checkin Delta reviewed and returned 3 physical documents from each of us: passport, CDC card, and a filled out / signed French government form attesting to our COVID-related health. We did not need to show the CDC card nor the form again.
Charles de Gaulle Airport immigration (Tue Aug 24) after 8:10am arrival. French immigration viewed 3 documents from each of us : passport, boarding pass, and pass sanitaire. For the pass sanitaire we displayed the QR code on our mobile phones. The immigration agent scanned the QR code. [EDIT 8/29: Note 8/29 reply by Bill B - French Immigration accepted his CDC card on that date, as he had not yet received a passe sanitaire.]
Flight and Charles de Gaulle Airport - add’l info.
On the plane the flight attendants distributed, had us fill out, and then collected forms from the French government that reported on the health status of passengers, as well as their (first) address in France. One form for each family. Not 100% certain, but apparently the information would be used for contact tracing in the event a passenger was later found to have had COVID (or any other contagious malady) during the flight.
Before landing the Delta flight attendants distributed surgical masks as they said that CDG requires this type of mask, and that you could be fined otherwise. Several flights landed about the same time as us, so there was a crush of people lining up for immigration; many were wearing cloth (not surgical) masks, but we didn’t see anyone reprimanded. No social distancing enforced in the immigration wait line. After our 8:10am arrival, walking to the immigration line (we had only carryon luggage), and waiting about 50 minutes in the immigration line, we were on our TGV platform about 20 minutes before the 9:46am departure. (BTW, Air France has a tool on their web site for calculating how long it takes to travel between two points in CDG Airport -- including wait times. The amount of time it calculated for our trajectory was very close to the actual amount we required.)
CDG INOUI TGV from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the Loire Valley. After getting through immigration, we caught a 9:46 INOUI TGV train. Before being allowed entry to the platform area our pass sanitaire QR codes were scanned. Masking was required inside the train, on the TER local train we rode afterwards, and within the train stations.
Since arriving we have dined at 2 restaurants; both scanned our passe sanitaire upon entry. We have also visited 2 attractions; both scanned our pass sanitaire upon entry.
Based on the languages we have heard spoken in Amboise, most tourists we encountered appear to be from France with some from other European countries and a smattering from N. America. Everyone is masked inside (when not eating), and most also outside when in crowded locations.
In addition to loading the passe sanitaire into the TousAntiCovid app in our mobile phones, we also brought along a couple of hard copies we printed out -- just in case.