Flying With Covid To Spain

I dislike paying upfront for any service as you have no comeback or leverage if anything goes wrong, and Randox really took the biscuit on this occasion. The test center at Dublin Airport was a prefab and you had to Q outside in the cold and rain before the booked appointment slot. After five days and repeated calls and emails to the Randox Helpline, which is basically a third party call center, my test results failed to materialise.

I was given no explanation or response and to cut a long story short, I am currently trying to get my money back from this company via Visa Chargeback. Avoid these private companies like the plague and my advice is to book your PCR test with your GP who can refer you for a free test with a professional medical company.

I flew with Ryanair, a company I had fallen out of love with during the early stages of the pandemic, due to their scurrilous behaviour around refunds earlier in the year, but as the Irish company was one of the few airlines in the air trying to beat this pandemic, I felt they deserved another chance, as Micheal O’Leary must have suffered a road to damascus moment with his free flight changes deal, an offer too good to refuse from the ex accountant.

I had also observed that Ryanair were not cancelling flights and I could see why – his jets were full on both legs of my journey. On my Barcelona – Dublin leg, it was easy to get through customs on my Irish passport, but it was very quiet in Barcelona with Ryanairs old Terminal 1 building closed with all flights operating out of T2.

I did notice quite a few British nationals on the flight and I overheard one man saying he took a ferry into Belfast from the UK before travelling by train to Dublin thus avoiding any border controls and the requirement for a negative PCR test. He was taking the same route home. The man was not wearing a mask on board the flight, (he had it boarding) but was not approached by Ryanair staff to put it back on and flew without it throughout the flight.

I don’t blame Ryanair staff – they are not paid enough to enforce Covid 19 health laws and Ryanair don’t want to go down that road id guess. Departing Barcelona Airport there was a heavy police presence at the departure gate, randomly checking passports after you passed through the gate.