MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Compassionate charter flight for the Falklands' Chilean community on March 19

The return flight to Santiago will cost £550 and a return flight to Punta Arenas £350. One way flights are available and will cost half of that.

Next March 19, a 'compassionate' charter flight with a capacity for 168 passengers, will be flying to Chile from the Falkland Islands, returning Saturday, April 9, 2022. The flight will only stop in both Punta Arenas and Santiago on the outbound and return journeys.

 When this happens the Falklands' government will have complied with its pledge to the Chilean community that hasn't been able to visit their country to manage family, personal or health issues for almost two years, since the start of the pandemic.

The return flight to Santiago will cost £550 and a return flight to Punta Arenas £350. One way flights are available and will cost half of that.

Priorities will be based on a “first come first served basis” said MLA Mark Pollard at a press conference “presuming everyone has very similar compassionate reasons for going…”

Falkland Islands residents will be able to buy a ticket, providing they need to travel for one of the following reasons:

• To renew travel and/or identification documents
• To visit family that they have not seen for a long time, due to pandemic disruptions
• To manage other outstanding personal and/or health issues which have been impacted by Covid-19.

Passengers will be asked to confirm how they meet these criteria at the point of booking their ticket and will be permitted the normal luggage allowances.

People wanting to travel for business purposes, or to take a holiday, will not be eligible for this compassionate charter flight; equally these flights will not carry freight.

The flight will be subject to the necessary permissions from authorities in order to operate, and we are working to secure these in order for people to be able to leave the Islands on compassionate grounds.

As for quarantine, Chief Executive Andy Keeling explained passengers would be required to undertake either a PCR or an LFD test, before returning to the Falklands. “We will need a formal certificate as proof of that test. So LFD self-administered tests wouldn’t be accepted for that. Everyone on the inbound flight on the ninth of April will be required to quarantine as is the case for the airbridge at the moment.

Any passengers booking a flight to the Falklands will need to submit their IDC5 form at the time of booking. And the IDC5 form requires that you detail your arrangements for quarantine. It's really important to stress that passengers will be responsible for their own arrangement.

FIG will not be able to provide quarantine accommodation, because we simply don't have the capacity.”

For questions about reservations, pricing and logistics, please contact International Tours and Travel, who are the booking agents for this flight, on 22041. (Penguin News)