Tips on Traveling Internationally with Kids during the Pandemic

Interested in traveling internationally with kids during the pandemic? We just flew from Spain to Zurich, through Chicago to our final destination, San Francisco! 

We share our tips below.

Sanitary / Health tips: Traveling Internationally with kids during the Pandemic

We always recommend this all over our blog, but talk to your kids about what’s going to happen in advance! Talk through the below and any other points that you’d like them to keep in mind while you’re passing through or in crowded areas.

1. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, your kids should already be familiar with social distancing, mask wearing and washing/sanitizing hands. It’s even more important as you travel and are exposed to new environments and people.
2. Beyond social distancing, mask wearing and washing hands, talk to your kids about the change in travel mindset. Our kids have traveled quite a bit, so this was a change for them. Normally, we encourage socializing but we weren’t quite sure how others would receive it due to the current circumstances with COVID. When our daughter’s throat got dry and she coughed, we got a lot of looks! I let know her it was OK and to just drink some water. Most families just kept to themselves and we only spoke to families who happened to be seated near us.
3. Make it clear what your family’s rules are. We try to set some guidelines but are not completed stickler (e.g try not to touch public things, and wash their hands afterwards if they need to). Things that in “normal” times, would have seemed fine, may feel like virus filled objects now (e.g. our daughter kept trying to drink out of a public fountain). Although it should already be sanitized, flight attendants also handed us sanitizing towels upon boarding and we use them to wipe down the seats, arm rests, screens, eating trays, etc.

COVID Restrictions and tips

Stick with direct international flights and avoid transiting through multiple countries

As with general flying recommendations with kids, stick with direct international flights, wherever possible. If you need to have a layover, try to avoid layovers involving multiple countries as you may be hit with multiple country restrictions and COVID specific forms to complete (You must complete one for every passenger, and some require seat numbers so it gets a bit cumbersome, especially when you also have to meet other criteria – see below).

The other reason why we mention this is because international flights are still relatively empty and made us feel more secure about COVID safety regulations. Here’s our almost empty section on our flight from Zurich to Chicago.

Meanwhile, our domestic US Chicago to SF flight was packed!

Review specific country COVID restrictions for EVERY country thoroughly, including those you’ll transit through.

We transited through Switzerland via Zurich and Chicago for the outbound flight. Our flight back stopped only once in Frankfurt, Germany before arriving in our final destination, Spain. Every country has its own requirements – make sure to read them carefully.

For Chicago (entering the US), we needed to fill out a CDC attestation form (we were told one form per person, two copies each, though no one collected ours) and show proof of our negative COVID test, which must have been taken within the past 3 days of flight departure (for anyone over age 2). 

This is one of the most lenient policies we’ve seen. If your flight is in the afternoon and you take the test 3 days earlier in the morning, it will still be valid, whereas with other countries, it would not be valid as they have a specific maximum hour limit, and they tie it with arrival, NOT departure time.

For Switzerland, we were required to fill out an online form (it produces a QR code). I completed it in advance, but needed to return and edit the form once we finalized our seating assignments (we just got free seating assignments at check-in 24 hours prior to departure). We printed them out just in case the phone decided not to work. 

We booked through Lufthansa, but our outbound flight was on their partner airline Swiss Air. Swiss Air sent us a reminder with specific country requirements and we got our COVID test papers from the local hospital in accordance with what we read. Apparently, the documents we got were NOT sufficient. Which leads us to the next two points.

Make sure to review the government website (even ones you’ll be transiting). Do NOT solely rely on the airlines website nor the requirements of your final destination

For our outbound flight, the Swiss air website did not mention that the COVID test result needed to be in any specific language. The US, our final destination, does not require translation of the COVID test result for languages like Spanish, so we assumed we’d be fine.

Apparently, Switzerland only accepts them in a few languages. We didn’t realize this as the Swiss Air website had no mention of this. I contacted them afterwards and they pointed to an obscure note somewhere that says they are not liable for any errors or omissions as they only provide the information as a convenience and that we should check official requirements! 

When we googled Switzerland’s requirements, we did in fact, easily find specific language requirements. Don’t rely on the airline’s website or your final destination since it’ll be the agents at departure and layover airports that will determine if you can fly or not. 

To ensure you have the most up to date requirements, always check the official countries requirements (Things are rapidly changing!). 

Many European countries are working to offer their citizens a Digital Green Certificate/Covid passport that proves they have either fully recovered from COVID or have been fully vaccinated, so they can travel more freely within the Schengen area.

Don’t worry if you aren’t a EU citizen (I’m not!). We read recently that Germany, for example, will now accept a U.S. CDC vaccination card, showing you are fully vaccinated in lieu of a negative COVID test result. Spain, as of today, June 7th, should also accept the vaccination card.

This, of course, doesn’t apply for anyone who isn’t vaccinated, like your children under 12 (at the time of publishing this, the US recently opened vaccination for 12-15 year olds). 

FYI – If you have a child <6 years, Germany nor Spain is currently isn’t requiring any kind of testing/vaccination record for them. I thought this was great as we could save some money and effort needed to test everyone (only my 6-year-old daughter would have to get tested).

Take advantage of advanced check-in and COVID related document reviews, if offered

Fortunately, Swiss Air offers an advanced check-in feature where you can upload your COVID related test results and forms and they let you know if what you have is sufficient (they promise a 12 hour turn around review time but ours only took about 3-4 hours).

Unfortunately for us, we received a denial due to language! 

Since we uploaded all our paperwork as soon as we could, this left us enough time to go and get a new test and get the results in English. 

As many of you who have taken the test can attest to, getting a super long swab slid up and around your nose (who knew it could go up that far!) is NOT comfortable, especially for children. Make sure to confirm which test you need, the language the results need to be in and any other requirements you need BEFORE going to get tested. For example, our requirements said our test results needed to also list individual passenger passport # or other identifying information, like birth date.

At the Worksite labs site at SFO, I specifically confirmed with the testing site again, that our passports would be on the test results and they said yes (it makes sense because I have to enter them in when I pay for our appointments). But Lo and Behold, 10pm rolls around and I get the test results and the documents do NOT show the passport number anywhere! Fortunately, their offices were open until midnight and I was able to get a hold of someone to explain what I needed. He said his supervisor would send us new documents tomorrow – I tried to stay calm, but I was like “We fly tomorrow! We paid for our test results to get back to us in 12 hours. I confirmed that our passport #s would be included and they are not!”. He went ahead and escalated it and said that his supervisor knows it’s urgent and will get to it first thing in the morning. Within an hour, I had my new test results 🙂

Make sure to check your test results documentation as soon as you receive it!!

Review the specific test type, days/hours requirement for the COVID test

Excluding Hawaii, the US has one of the most lax requirements we’ve seen. As long as you take the COVID test within 3 days of departure, there is no specific time/hour requirement (e.g. the test must not have been taken less than 72 hours before departure). 

The US also accepts the Antigen test which is significantly faster and cheaper than the PCR test (the antigen test cost us only 40 euros each, whereas the PCR test which would have cost us 110-150 euros each).

But for countries like Germany, depending on which test you get/is required and whether or not you’ll be transiting, your COVID test needs to be taken within 48 hours of ARRIVAL, not departure. We’ve seen this has been a challenge for a lot of folks as the standard turnaround time for PCR tests is sometimes 2-3 days. 

We recommend getting a travel specific COVID test, if possible, with a fast turnaround time to 1) guarantee you get your test results in time and 2) to obtain a certificate with the required data (some test results are delivered via phone and does not provide you with a certificate you need to show for travel). 

The San Francisco International airport (SFO) for example, in partnership with Worksite Labs, offers Rapid PCR testing with results in 24 turnaround time for $90 and 12 hour turnaround time for $150. This is significantly less than other prices I’ve seen in the Bay Area, with rapid PCR tests ranging from $200-$450.

When googling, I recommend you search for PCR test for travel. Otherwise, you’re not guaranteed a document with the required information on it.

Cost, effort and risk: worth it for international travel during COVID restrictions?

Some of you may be wondering if the cost, effort and risk are worth travel in these uncertain times. This is very much a personal decision.

For us, we’ve been very careful under Spain’s strict lockdown and social distancing rules. But as I’ve shared previously, our children, ages 4 and 6, have been in school all year long wearing masks and neither of them have gotten COVID (though as I’ve shared previously, we have had a few scares, COVID testing and home isolations due to a classmate getting COVID).

There have been a handful of cases at their school but they’ve followed the health department’s protocols and all cases have been determined to have occurred outside of school in family-and-friend gatherings and the affected child did not transmit COVID to anyone else at school.

We originally were quite worried at the beginning of the school year, especially since we had been doing remote learning since March of last year when Spain announced a complete lockdown. 

But we are now about to wrap up their ‘20-‘21 school year and have seen the value of following social distancing protocols that enable us to continue to send our kids to school and for people to return to work (my husband is a firefighter and is an essential worker). I know most of you are in the states and my friends have told me about how their kids have been remote learning all year long (I applaud you, my brave friends!).

As an international family, it’s also hard for us to avoid international travel. My kids haven’t been back to California in 2.5 years and we wanted to see family and friends.

We also couldn’t deny that it would be wonderful to visit national parks and places like Disney at limited capacity.

As an adventure seeking family who had to cancel two planned international trips last year (our SE Asia trip was planned for March/April and Madagascar was planned for August/September), we felt it was time to start seeing the world again.

We hope all the above information was helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to add a comment below or reach out via email or chat. We’ll do our best to help!