Peter @ FCO Advice line advised OK 13.8
Easyjet advised OK 13.8
Official FCO advice
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/switzerland
Many people not happy!
UK Government quarantines Basel Switzerland with ZERO notice after changing advice about Basel Euroairport.
All of Switzerland will soon be next.
Zero notice? Not really. Exactly the same as the rest of France.
Whether you agree with the quarantine or not, you could hardly expect them to make exceptions just because it might inconvenience a few more people.
Oh, and what is this "Basel Switzerland" of which you speak? Basel city/canton is not affected at all, just like the rest of Switzerland.
It’s not as if one “transits France” in any case Switzerland has its own corridor to, entrance and half of the terminal building. The security gates and the departures lounge are shared however that is the same in ANY airport with passengers taking connecting flights anyway, it makes little difference I guess as has already been pointed out Switzerland will likely be on the list too by the end of the week.
What other airport then is in 2 countries at the same place? As the security gates and lounges are shared you are then effectively in France
None, not even Basel airport.
It is 100% in France.
Tom
All of which are actually in France.
Tom
And once past check-in, security and (if necessary) passport control everyone entering from both France and Switzerland are in a common area, sharing jokes and viruses.
Get airside at any large airport hub like Schiphol or Frankfurt and one is rubbing shoulders with all sorts of nationalities. There’s little logic to the decision.
Rubbish. The terminal building hasn't been separated for years, neither departures nor arrivals, so there is no separation between passengers from France and Switzerland even before they get on the same plane together. The road from Basel is also entirely within France, not that it's really relevant (except in the event of an accident, where it would be French, not Swiss, emergency services who would attend).
You said that part is France and part is Switzerland, what has that to do with FRA or AMS? Of course anyone is rubbing shoulders with anyone on a large airport. Not nowadays anyway.....
And sharing the plane to UK too.
Now, I wonder whether the same shouldn't happen to Geneva airport, which has a french sector - you can come from France and board a plane without entering Switzerland. By this logic, shouldn't that mean that swiss travellers to UK flying from Geneva should also quarantine?
To be clear, I spoke to the FCO help line yesterday afternoon Peter at the FCO Corona Helpline actually advised it was OK as long as ticket stated Switzerland.
The FCO updated their website at some point after my call - OK - not zero notice, but much less than was given for travellers actually in France.
This affects all travellers to the UK using Basel airport
Correction:
as long as ticket stated BSL and not MLH
Not really- they could just close access from the French sector.
Shhh! Some questions need not be asked, you likely won’t like the answer.
People coming from France from the south likely would enter Switzerland via Bardonnex before the airport and depart from the Swiss side.
A Brit doing this could honestly say s/he had travelled from Geneva, avoiding the quarantine. That is from 04h00 tomorrow.
Stuttgart it is!
Wondering how it will impact Calais to Dover ferries or tunnel.... a friend is driving next week from Basel expecting that he will pass through the tunnel as he never got exposed in France.
Isn’t the access road basically a sanitary corridor . That road has no other purpose than to travel between the airport and Switzerland . There are no other exits (except access roads for police and emergency services , which are strictly off limits to the public) and the road is fenced on both sides .
The airport terminal similarly used to be fully segregated landside and it would be easy to put that division back at short notice as it is just a question of locking a couple of doors . The only genuinely tricky problem would be airside .
We had flights booked Basel to Edinburgh for October, think by that time Switzerland would be on the list again though anyway. Going back to OP, agree that these restrictions need to be in place if numbers are high and virus is spreading faster again, just think the chaos of the last few days could be avoided with a little more notice and frankly competence from the UK government, I mean UK transport secretary couldn't even say which day it was coming into force live on TV!
"Private vehicles
You don’t need to self-isolate if you travel through a non-exempt country and you don’t stop in the country.
If you do make a stop, you don’t need to self-isolate if:
no new people get into the vehicle
no-one in the vehicle gets out, mixes with other people, and gets in again
You do need to self-isolate if you make a stop and:
new people get into the vehicle, or
someone gets out of the vehicle, mixes with other people and gets in again"
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavi…xemption-rules
We’re keeping an eye on the situation since we hope to go back to the UK in September, having missed our spring visit due to the virus.
Take your food with you so you can eat in your car and probably use the smaller rest areas that don’t have restaurants/shops, etc, where more people will be. And hope you can squat down to use the hole in the ground toilets they still seem to have, even though many of these rest areas have been undergoing renovation in recent years. Come on France, it’s the 21st century, not the 14th!