May 4, 2009

May 4, 2009 – We made it back to Beijing today. Our flight left Boise at its usual time of 6 AM on Sunday morning May 3, and arrived with no problems in San Francisco. We then had the usual 4+ hour layover to contend with. We walked; we used our computers, and purchased a bite to eat and just waited. Then after our connecting flight landed and the new flight crew began to board the aircraft a small commotion began. It seems the airplane was going to be taken out of service and we would be getting a new aircraft. As it turned out, we had to change gates and wound up leaving about 45 minutes late. After takeoff, things went as normal, after 3 movies, several meals - lunch, snack, lunch and several naps, we landed in Beijing. Because of the H1N1 (Swine) Flu concerns that is present almost everywhere, we had to fill out health declaration forms while in flight and hand them in at the airport. In addition, in China you have to go through a checkpoint each time you arrive from an international flight that checks your temperature to make sure you are not running a fever (this has been in effect long before the flu awareness though). Normally, you just walk through this area and the infrared temperature scanners take your temperature. This time we had to hand in the form. This created a HUGE bottleneck at this checkpoint as it appears that tourist season has begun as well as many school children were apparently traveling also. It kind of reminded us of herding cattle into the chutes at a dairy…LOL. It took us probably a half an hour to clear through this then we had to go through customs before we could go to baggage claim. All in all, we were probably close to 2 hours late getting through to where our ride was waiting for us.

Here is a synopsis of an article that appeared in the China Daily newspaper - Passengers entering the country through Beijing Capital International Airport may need to brace themselves for an additional half an hour to go through tightened quarantine procedures against A(H1N1) influenza.

Yesterday afternoon, not a peak time for arrivals, each queue of International passengers waiting at the eight check points at Terminal 3 was longer than 10m (38 feet).

“Usually it takes about 5 minutes for 300 passengers to pass border quarantine, but now it takes at least half a minute for each passenger to complete the procedure (which works out to 150 minutes for 300 passengers), excluding the time waiting in the queue,” Wang Yang, an officer at the airport’s Inspection and quarantine bureau, said.

Starting last weekend, all passengers entering the mainland have had to complete a health declaration form and hand it to quarantine officers.

They need to fill in their names, passport numbers, flight numbers, contacts and travel history as well as whether they have any flu symptoms.

At the quarantine gates, officers check the forms to make sure the names and passport numbers are right.

“The information could be vital if we need to trace anyone, so we require passengers to fill in all items in the form,” Wang said.

But many fail to do, and have to fill them in at the gate.

“That takes time,” he said.

Before handing in their forms, passengers’ body temperatures are checked by infrared machines. If the temperature is higher than 37 C (98.6 F), officers question the passenger to decide whether to place him or her in an isolation room.

There the doctor conducts checks and, if necessary, the passenger is transferred to a designated hospital for quarantine.

When we left Boise, it was raining and the temperature was in the 50’s. When we landed in Beijing, the sky was clear and sunny and the temperature was around 85 degrees F. What a change! By the time we made it to the car with all of our luggage, we were slightly overheated! We made it back to the apartment complex with no other problems or adventures. To our surprise we actually wound up in the same exact apartment as last time. That makes it easy to unpack as we remember where we put everything before.