Nothing much happened on the flight to Amsterdam, other than that we enjoyed some food and drinks. After our landing in Amsterdam, and as the shops were closed due to Covid, we made our way to the other side of the airport to find the gate for KL0855. This flight was due to take off at 21:15 hours, so we had about one and a half hours time to get there. At the gate was another Covid check.

Another perk of Business Class flying is priority boarding, especially when you’re a family. Because we were being called first we happily went inside the plane, and instead of being guided to the right, to Economy Class, this time we were invited to go to the left. After looking inside one of my girls said: “Daddy, look we have our own cubicle!”, and she was right. Every seat had its own space, and there was no direct contact with a neighbor. And…. one of the first things to try out…, the chair went flat all the way! Great! I foresaw a good night’s rest.

Suffice to say that nothing noteworthy happened during the flight. The food was good, the drinks were nice, it was a luxurious privilege to be able to sleep flat, and time flew by. The 13 hours of flying time were reduced to just a few hours of being conscious.

In preparation for our travel as soon as we learned we would fly Business Class we checked out many YouTube review videos of different airlines, so when we finally knew we would fly KLM we were not disappointed.

We landed at around 15:00 hours at Incheon International Airport. Everything had gone smooth, we put on our shoes, grabbed the cabin bags, and moved towards Immigration. Incheon Airport was big! It was clean! There were so few people. And we had quite a few meters to walk. Everywhere we saw Covid related signs, including banners that encouraged us to download certain apps.

While waiting in line for Immigration we first were informed by the cabin crew that I had left my denim jacket in the plane, and that because they were not allowed to carry passengers’ belongings after them they advised informing the people of lost baggage because the cleaning crew was supposed to bring “lost and found” stuff there. We thanked them and they left through their own priority lane.

As mentioned before we noticed quite a few banners in different languages telling about downloading a Covid app. For the moment we didn’t do anything and decided to wait to see what would come to us. We already knew that all incoming passengers had to undergo a mandatory 14-days quarantine period.

We also learned that almost all people had to go to a government-appointed facility where they would be tested and had to stay for the quarantine. However, there were a few exceptions, and one of the exceptions was a visa F-2, like the one that we had. People with this visa were allowed to go to their own place to stay in quarantine. Someone who knew about this had told us that we just had to tell all officials about our status.

As soon as we passed immigration people in white hazmat suits were waiting for us and brought us to Parcours with several stations which we had to go through. A few of the officials spoke English and sometimes we had to wait until they were available. It was all very well organized and it looked very impressive. Now I started to understand why Korea had so few Covid cases. They were really very serious in tackling possible contaminated people, and they tested, tested, and kept testing.

Here’s the breakdown, we had to do a PCR test maximum 72 hours before the flight and show a negative test result upon arriving, on the same day we arrived in Korea (or within 24 hours) we had to do another test, and we had to go in quarantine, and after 14 days we had to do the final test.

Here is even more detailed information.

While in the Covid ‘test’-street, we had to undergo a temperature check, and fill in several forms and questionnaires, and we had to agree to Korea’s quarantine measures. The officials also downloaded an app called: ‘Self-Quarantine Safety and Protection’ and another app which later was deleted by a policeman waiting outside luggage. Strange.

It took quite some time to make it to the finish line, and find ourselves near baggage bands, looking for our luggage. It was close to 18:00 hours, so we already had spent 3 hours on Korean soil.

Directions were very clear to our luggage belt and actually guarded by an official the suitcases were standing outside the rotating belt. Upon checking we missed three suitcases and had to go through the elaborate process of reporting them to a dedicated desk in the area.

I also told them about my missing denim jacket with Rayban sunglasses in one of the pockets upon which he gave me a business card with a telephone number to call the next day.

Finally, with 5 trolleys loaded (again) with suitcases and cabin bags, we moved towards customs, where we had to unload the trolleys and move the luggage one by one through a big scanner after which we could upload the trolleys again and move outside.

Once we got out of the luggage area some policemen were waiting for us, and the funny/strange thing was that one of them immediately wanted our phones to delete one of the two apps that were put there previously by their colleagues in hazmat suits. Then he ushered us to another policeman where we had to register again and were subsequently put in a waiting room which slowly filled up with other people.