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- KLM has cut flights from South Africa, as the Netherlands has just announced new travel restrictions in response to new Covid-19 variants.
- The flight ban takes effect from January 23, 2021 and passengers will be contacted and rebooked on alternative flights at no additional cost.
- KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has canceled all its long-haul flights.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Dutch airline KLM has cut flights from South Africa when the Dutch government announced on Wednesday a new Covid-19-related blockade that severely limits international travel. KLM has suspended all its long-haul flights, according to Reuters.
The flight ban takes effect from January 23, 2021 and passengers will be contacted and rebooked on alternative flights at no additional cost.
New government requirements require passengers to obtain a negative Covid-19 rapid test result no later than four hours before departure to the Netherlands. Additionally, passengers must also have a negative result from a PCR test performed within 72 hours of their flight departure in order to enter the country.
The restrictions are some of the strictest imposed by any national government at this point in the pandemic, and as a result, the country expects travel to decline markedly. In January, KLM had plans to serve more than 30 countries outside of Europe with around 270 weekly long-distance departures, according to data from Reuters and Cirium.
Travelers must still quarantine themselves even with the two negative tests for at least five days before they can be tested with a negative PCR test. If a negative test result is not received after five days, the quarantine may end after 10 days.
The Netherlands also announced a ban on passenger flights from the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. KLM currently serves eight of those countries.
The ban on passenger flights from the UK, which was initially issued in December, has also been extended. The new restrictions on travel from those countries are expected to last at least a month or until legislation is passed outlining quarantine requirements for those travelers.
“The government is very concerned about the British variant of the coronavirus, which is even more infectious than the virus we are familiar with in the Netherlands,” the government said in a statement.
The Caribbean Netherlands is also affected by the new order, according to the statement, which means that travel may be affected to Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, as well as to the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, including Aruba. , Sint Maarten and Curaçao. .
Bonaire recently opened its air borders to North America with plans for nonstop flights to the United States in February.
International travel is discouraged for residents of the Netherlands until at least March 31, 2021. “Each trip a person takes increases the chances of causing more infections or bringing new variants of the coronavirus to the Netherlands.”
In the domestic sphere, citizens of the Netherlands are advised not to have more than one daily visitor over the age of 13 and not to make more than one daily visit to another home. A curfew is also being planned to keep residents in between 8:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m.
The Netherlands is also restricting what types of travelers will be granted exemptions to enter the country during the pandemic. As a result, groups, including business travelers and students, will not be able to enter.
The government also noted that “people in long-distance romantic relationships who wish to travel to the Netherlands for a short period will no longer be able to enter.”
“We don’t want to look back in a few weeks and realize that we didn’t do enough,” the statement said.
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