London to Shanghai

We have arrived in Auckland and have 6 hours until our flight to Wellington.

It was a very stressful 24 hours until we had been PROCESSED at Shanghai Airport.

Got all organised at the hotel to do our online health declaration, filled out all the required fields and verified and submitted it. We had even arranged with the hotel to get a paper copy printed as a back-up. A QR code should have come back immediately. We waited, and we waited. We had to be at Heathrow 4 hours before departure so thought we could sort it out at the airport. The very unhelpful Virgin Atlantic desk staff said to try again and keep trying until departure. Did it about ten times using both our email addresses and on my laptop and phone. Nothing. Spoke with four different people all with a slightly different take on it. They said they would let us on the plane and email China Customs that we didn’t have the code. Another said because we were in transit and flying to New Zealand we did not need the code and that we would need to pick up our bags at Shanghai Airport.

Feeling discombobulated we boarded the plane. At Shanghai we passed through border control with e-passport, Barbara had her fingerprints taken, I was exempt being over 70, and had our photo taken and our temperature taken. Then went to the transfer desk where we got new boarding passes and were asked for our QR code which of course we didn’t have. Not a problem. A very nice lady took us aside did the application on our behalf on her phone which instantly came up with the codes. I photographed them onto my phone and we were taken to another border control area where they were scanned and we were all okay. About 30 people were on our Virgin flight from Heathrow and were transferring to Air NZ and we were not the only ones without a QR Code. This whole business is a Covid requirement and they are obviously well used to people not having the code. Didn’t have to collect and recheck our bags, and after another security screening we were released to the departure lounge.

PHEW!

Left Heathrow 45 minutes late and a 12 hour 18 minute flight to Shanghai OU Dong. The stop over should have been almost 5 hours but with the delay and very slow processing only 2 hours. Then 11 hours 30 minutes to Auckland. Both flights were pretty good, better than we expected. Even got some sleep for a few hours off and on. The food was good too. The coffee tasted good after UK coffee.