ALGIERS — Algeria flights again gearing up to skies on Tuesday after a 14-month of gap due to Covid-19 Pandemic, as of now it was partially reopened with a first flight of the national carrier Air Algerie taking off for Paris on Tuesday and another expected to land later in Algiers, the capital.
Great caution governed the partial reopening, with restricted flights, tests for COVID-19, and a required quarantine.
Those heading to Algiers will need to have a negative PCR test less than 36 hours before boarding, and all passengers must undergo a five-day quarantine in a hotel requisitioned by the state. A negative test result is required to leave the hotel.
The number of weekly flights and destinations is limited to 5 cities now: Paris and Marseille in France, the Spanish city of Barcelona, Tunisian capital Tunis and Istanbul.
Air Algerie personnel lined as much as applaud arriving passengers for the first flight.
Algerians in Paris, Algiers, and elsewhere groused about the restrictions and the price. Expenses and meals at the hotel are at the passengers’ expense. And not everybody can board infrequent flights. In pre-virus times, many Algerians in France, for instance, often returned to their homeland for visits.
“It’s the first operation. We want nice vigilance from our passengers since the success of this operation will be determining for what follows,” Air Algerie spokesman Amine Andaloussi stated in an interview with the site visa-algerie.com.
Other airlines, like Tunisair and Air France, were expected to add flights of their own.
Algeria has registered 3,472 deaths from COVID-19 as of Monday evening, and more than 128,900 confirmed cases, far less than European nations and less than its North African neighbors.
