Main Edition
US
FR
December 21, 2020 - 3:46pm
Yesterday, I was supposed to fly home to Italy. I had arrived at Stansted Airport early to take the Covid-19 antigen test — a requirement for travelling to Italy — before waiting until 18.30 for my Ryanair flight to Venice, my hometown. I could never have imagined what a nightmare the following hours would turn into.
After paying the £50 for a test, I started to read on Twitter that the Italian Government was about to sign a ruling that banned all flights coming from the UK in order to “protect Italians from the new version of the virus.” I talked to some fellow Italians while I was waiting for my test results, all calling their families and trying to scrape information together from the news and social media about whether our flight was involved. One girl, Eva, who was carrying a trolley full of luggages, had been telling me how much she was looking forward to going back home to stay after one year as an au-pair in London.
At 2pm neither the Government statements or any news website were giving any indication as to when this new ruling would come into effect; in fact, most news reports simply said that it was ‘not specified’. From that moment on there was a lot of waiting. By 4pm, I had heard nothing so I started checking-in my luggage. Eva told me that a member of personnel assured her that our flight would not be affected.
After passing through security at 5.40pm — only 50 minutes before our departure — all flights to Italy were cancelled. As I went to retrieve my luggage, the situation around me turned surreal: most of the people there were young Italians, many of whom were crying over the phone. A young man told me that he didn’t know where to spend the night as he had permanently left his accommodation in the morning. It was heartbreaking.
It was mostly frustration that hit us all. Why was the flight to Palermo at 5pm allowed to depart? Why did no one alert us? Why were Italian citizens being left behind despite coming back with a negative Covid test? I returned to my flat in London, but many were not as fortunate as me. I was, and still am, speechless.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeOf course it’s ridiculous that these flights were cancelled and one feels for all those affected. This new mutation is almost certainly already in Italy, given that it was spotted in Brazil in March. But this has been the year of the ridiculous, and 2021 will be no different.
Poe’s short story, ‘Masque of the Red Death’ has been coming to mind from the beginning. All the wealthy lock themselves in a castle to feast and dance and wile away time till the visiting Black Plague passes, but…. you guess what happened.
The cask of Amontillado is another Poe story that comes to mind for lockdown and Covid 19
It would be better not to allow people to comment when they think something like this is funny…Just remember it could happen to you or yours. Laugh then, will you?
“Why was the flight to Palermo allowed to depart”?
Because it is not, nor never really has been, part of Italy, has it?
I was going to suggest that the mafia might have had a say in the matter.
Yes, I though of that but didn’t want to wake up with one my Spaniel’s severed head in my bed!
Because it left at 5, and her’s at 5:40. There must be some point where the cutoff happens. Zeno’s Paradox (You can throw a rock at a wall but it never will hit it because: It travels half way there, then half of that, and half of the remaining distance and so on for infinity as there is always half the distance left to travel) has been shown to be a bad way to model reality.
I prefer the other Zeno, the Cypriot one, myself.
Because it is strong decisive leadership by the Italian Govt. If we can get Boris out and Sir Kier in we could get screwed over like all our European cousins who benefit all the time from strong decisive leadership.
Merry Christmas and goodwill to all men, women and non binaries.