I know I was searching for every bit of info prior to making the trip to Greece, departing May 30 and arriving May 31. So thought I would share our experience - which may or may not be your exact same experience if you are coming here soon.
“Our” experience includes my wife, 17 year old granddaughter, and her friend flying from Denver to Dallas, through Heathrow, and then to Athens. All four of us had been vaccinated and passed the mandatory two weeks prior to departure. However, we were transiting through London and that required a COVID test. With the unknowing of how long it would take to get results and taking every precaution, we all took the COVID test twice in 2 days. That ended up being a wise move as three of us got both our results back in about 30 hours, but our family friend’s first result never arrived before we departed. Fortunately her second test came back the day before departure.
For me the biggest stresser was completing the PLF (Personal Locator Forms). The Greece one was easier and was accepted. But you won’t receive the confirmation email until midnight the day of arrival, in our case it arrived three minutes after midnight on the 31st, which was as we were taking off from Dallas. The email includes a QR code which I then had on my phone.
The pLF for UK was a lot more confusing. After a one hour call with British Air (the agent was really nice, but said he really didn’t know because he had never had to fill one out) I finally surmised that what I was missing was to include the PLF I had submitted to Greece as well. Who knew they needed that?! Well, at least I hadn’t. Once my daughter came over to help figure out how to upload the forms for the four of us, we were approved. And that was early on the day of departure. So that felt better than having to take care of that at the airport!
At the airport in Denver (checking in on American Airlines), we were asked to see our negative COVID test results which I had printed out. I didn’t know what to expect when checking in at Dallas with BA, but we had a tight connection (due to a delay in Denver) and when we checked in at Dallas nothing was asked other than to show our boarding passes and passports.
In London, we weren’t ever asked to show any proof of a negative test, it was just like transiting at any other time - except many fewer passengers at Heathrow! And then when we arrived in Athens, in the line just before passport control we were asked to show our QR code which I had on my phone. It wasn’t scanned or anything - just a cursory glance that we had it. :)
It was 7:00 pm when we arrived and we spent the night there and the next morning flew to Santorini. The agent asked to see our negative test result and we said we all had proof of vaccine. She was quite surprised we all had that and exclaimed that was great. I assume she was mostly surprised that the two 17 year-olds had received it as here it is not yet available to younger people.
Today (June 3) we are taking the ferry to Naxos and I’m assuming we will have to show our proof of vaccination to get on there as well.
It’s delightful as there are not many tourists, but enough to not feel like a ghost town. The hotels, restaurants, tour guides are happy to see tourists starting to slowly come back and are extra friendly. In the brief two days in Santorini we have not seen any cruise ships, so of course that also means not as many guests.
When you are comfortable doing so, I hope you make your way back to Greece again!