Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "fit to fly" documentation as well as COVID-19 testing. These are two different things and I want to get into this because I want to delineate that these are two different things. 

There was a really good submission to the Bangkok Post print edition, Bangkok Post Postbag. This was in the print edition January 2nd, 2021 and it is titled Impossible Dream, written by Stephan Karlsson and again it is in Bangkok Post print edition. I am sure it can be found online. There is a lot in here. I am going to quote one specific excerpt in order to parse out and be able to discuss issues associated with COVID-19 testing versus issues associated with "fit to fly" documentation because this does a really good job of chopping that up and lining that out.

Quoting directly: "Tuesday, December 29th 9:00 p.m. I arrive at the airport 3 hours ahead of gate time. Of course it is empty is there only 30 plus people booked on the flight which has some 350 seats. The gate agent looks over all my papers and after 10 minutes asks me for another form, something called "fit to fly".

"What is that?"

"Fit to fly."

"What is that?"

"Fit to fly",

"Yes, what is that?"

"Special form from a doctor indicating that you are "fit to fly".

And as an aside in here: "I am now thinking I am actually a commercial pilot but I am not working this trip, I am not going to physically fly this plane." It is just kind of the funniest, I shouldn't laugh but that does that a little humor to all of this.

"Wait that is what these are."

"No, that is COVID test papers." 

"Yes it's fit to fly." 

"No, no, no, no, that says okay you do not have COVID which is good, but you also need a paper that says you are healthy enough to fly. I can see you are healthy but we need this paper that says so."

"So I guess I am not going then, right?"  "No, cannot. So sorry nobody tell you before."  

So clearly this one document had a tremendous amount of impact on this person's overall ability to travel to Thailand or in this case not travel to Thailand. Yeah they are two different things: COVID testing is one thing, "fit to fly" documentation is another. This is one of those circumstances where unfortunately, I think the bureaucracy has gotten way ahead of itself, chasing its own tail with respect to this. Again it seems to be the policy initiative here pertains to COVID but then you have got this general "fit to fly" document which is just another document, but it is just a requirement. It is just what we have to deal with to get people in. 

Folks have contacted us when they have been sort of midway in this process or sort of attempting to get midway through this process and candidly by the time they get to us, they are so overwrought about the whole thing because there is just a lot of complexity right now in getting someone into Thailand. You have got to deal with all this documentation. Documentation that you think is one thing, like in this situation where you have health documentation pertaining to COVID, that isn't everything. There is other documentation and as we have discussed things like Visas versus Certificates of Entry, they seem like the same thing and in many ways they have the same aim, but they are not the same document. For this reason the whole process is far more complex than it once was. I am definitely not saying it should be but under the circumstances, it is what we have to deal with and it just simply is what it is. My heart goes out truly to those folks who had these circumstances where they have gone through all of this only to be disappointed at the end of the process and not be able to get on the plane.  

We have had a lot of success especially in quarter four of 2020 in assisting our clients in getting in. We have had a lot of our clients tell us "yeah this thing, I really would not have wanted to deal with this trying to do this on my own." Then we have also had situations where clients' flights get canceled. We have to reschedule flights and then we have to re-deal with documentation associated with that. We have had a lot of people, a lot of problems, it is nettlesome, it is vexing, it is definitely far more Byzantine than it has ever been in the past. 

For this reason, again folks doing it themselves, I really feel for you. Hopefully this will abate at some point but at least for now and I think into quarter two of 2021, we are probably still going to be dealing with this and you are just going to have to act accordingly and try to get through it as best you can.