TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Traveling For Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Traveling For Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.
Barely a day goes by without an airline or airline partnership announcing that it’s launching coronavirus testing on one or more of its routes and today is no exception. In recent days American Airlines has announced testing on its routes to Chile and the USVI, United said that it was bringing testing to Houston and now Delta and KLM have said that they will soon offer testing on flights from Atlanta to Amsterdam.
Delta & KLM’s “COVID-free” Flights
From 15 December, Delta and KLM will operate four weekly flights between Atlanta and Amsterdam (2 flights each) that will only carry passengers who have provided a negative COVID test. The flights will initially run for three weeks and, if successful, the airlines say that they hope to extend the program to other routes.
The airlines have said that travelers will be able to choose the COVID-tested flights when they purchase their tickets online or they can opt for one of the alternative Delta or KLM daily flights between Atlanta and Amsterdam that are not covered within the trial program (I’ve just checked and I can’t see any mention of this on the Delta or KLM websites when I search for a fare so it may be that the websites haven’t yet been updated).
To fly on Delta and KLM’s COVID-tested flights from Atlanta to Amsterdam, customers will need to:
- Take a COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test 5 days before arrival in Amsterdam.
- Take a rapid antigen prior to boarding at the Atlanta airport.
- Take a PCR test directly upon arrival at Schiphol.
A little strangely, the joint statement from Delta and KLM doesn’t mention who will be administering the tests and who will be responsible for the cost of the three tests that passengers are being asked to take, but I suspect that this program will follow a similar path to United’s “COVID-free” flights between Newark and London Heathrow in which the airline is bearing the costs of testing (I’ll update this post when I hear back from Delta’s news team).
A key aspect of this announcement that everyone should note is that this isn’t a pass for everyone in the US to starting visiting Europe again.
Although by taking these three tests, self-isolating until departure, and passing all three tests a traveler will not have to participate in the mandatory 10-day quarantine that the Netherlands is currently imposing, the Delta/KLM announcement clearly states that “[t]his new protocol will be available to all citizens permitted to travel to the Netherlands for essential reasons, such as for certain specified work, health and education reasons”.
That very clearly excludes the vast majority of people in the United States who may wish to travel to the Netherlands.
Bottom Line
From 15 December, Delta and KLM will be offering 4 weekly flights between Atlanta and Amsterdam on which all passengers will have passed two COVID tests before departure and whose passengers will be expected to take and pass a third COVID test upon arrival in Amsterdam.
While this program doesn’t appear to offer a path for most US residents to travel to the Netherlands at will, it does offer those who are currently allowed to visit the Netherlands the chance to avoid having to self-isolate for 10 days upon their arrival.
Featured image courtesy of Delta
What exactly happens when someone flying on a single ticket SEA-ATL-AMS is forced to take the rapid test on the 3 hour layover in atlanta and that test comes back positive?
Since you’ve partially flown the ticket now, there won’t be much value returned as e-creidt.
Since you don’t know anyone in Atlanta, how exactly are you supposed to get back to Seattle where you started from (legally is Delta supposed to help you get back to your point of origin per DOT rules if they’ve denied boarding mid-trip?
Will Delta be responsible for the 2 weeks of hotels in Atlanta if they’ll refuse to transport you back to your point of origin?
Remember, rapid tests are unreliable and most people getting the rapid test in Atlanta on this flight will be connecting passengers, so this scenario will happen more often than not, maybe once per flight at least.