I agree that everyone, and I mean everyone, who comes into the US whether by land, sea, car, air, on foot, in a truck, no matter the method needs to show a negative test.
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Here’s a little more Kabuki theater for the aficionados (I have never been a fan). Daughter was in San Diego for the Holiday Bowl as part of the Marching Band. To get into the band bus back to LA after the cancellation (or the game, had it not been cancelled) she needed to test negative for COVID, which she did (the Band program provided all the tests). Had she instead gone to SD airport to fly back to the Bay Area where we live, no need for a negative test or proof of vaccination to board the flight. Seems like an ever evolving set of standards that you need internet connection to keep up with.
Happy New Year everyone!!!
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Well it was the band (or bus company) that required the test, not TSA or the airport or whatever.
I ride a public bus most weekdays and I do not have to have a test. To go into some pubic venues like the hockey arena I do, but that’s an NHL requirement.
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Why? You meet plenty of infectious people every day in the US. Hardly any of them caught COVID in another country. Just like it was pointless banning travel from Africa when Omicron was already here, preventing a handful of people from traveling has zero impact on the course of the epidemic. And if we don’t screen before domestic air travel to prevent people catching it onboard, why would that be a reason to screen before international flights?
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Well, as painful as it was to cancel our family vacation to Mexico, it was the right call. DH tested positive last night after having cold-like symptoms. We are all vexed and boosted and have only seen our immediate families (who have all tested negative) during the holidays so he has no idea where he got it.
@xyz123a sorry to hear about your H and hope his symptoms are mild. An acquaintance of mine just sent holiday greetings from Cancun, where she is quarantined with her two teenage daughters. Her daughters both tested positive (asymptomatic) on their departure testing while she, her husband and two sons were negative. They had been there for a week. Her husband and sons came home, and she is quarantining with her daughters at a hotel.
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To be safe, I just did another rapid test since I’ve had the sniffles from our ski trip (I always get the sniffles when we ski). The test I took the day after we returned was negative, as was the one I just took. Nice to confirm its just the sniffles. But since I’d just hosted @MaineLonghorn here after she got stranded at the airport Thursday, I wanted to be sure it was just the sniffles. It is.
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Thanks @4kids4us! Thankfully, DH says it feels like the most mild cold he’s ever had. I am sorry to hear about your friend. That scenario is exactly what we feared and one of the reasons we cancelled our trip. We were scheduled to return just a few days before D20 was scheduled to return to campus - no time for quarantining in Mexico.
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My sister and her family are currently sitting at the gate…unable to board their flight to Tahiti. Their promised 24 hour turn around tests have not returned the results.
Since H and I are also supposed to travel to Tahiti in February…this is tilting the scale towards a hard stop to those plans.
You can pay extra to get guaranteed turn around time.
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I’m curious…how long to the COVID positives need to quarantine. Since the CDC changed their position to say 5 days if asymptomatic I’m wondering if this has translated to US re-entry requirements. Or, is one still expected to quarantine for 10 days - regardless of negative test results.?
They did.
Since the flight leaves at 11:30 the test needed to be done no less than 24 hours in advance.
Now, technically, a result returned by 11:29 counts as having met that metric. However, the airplane will be gone by then.
@dietz199 her FB post did not say how long they have to quarantine. She is just an acquaintance of mine, otherwise I would text her and ask. Her kids are supposed to be back in school on Monday so they won’t be making it back in time for that. If she updates, I will report back.
Editing to say that the CDC website does not mention needing to quarantine, just that you need a negative covid test or proof of recovery. So perhaps if they both take daily tests, once they test negative they can leave?
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I have to say that I felt much more comfortable traveling in Europe when they do prescreen. I would be happy to do that here.
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I had three events scheduled during my trip to Texas that were all canceled.
I postponed my return trip from this past Tuesday to Wednesday for one of those canceled events. 
From FlightAware, I can tell if I had returned Tuesday, I would have made it back as scheduled.
As it was, my flights Wednesday were canceled and my second flight Thursday was canceled at the last minute. I stayed with @Jym626 overnight Thursday. My first flight Friday was delayed by two hours but I made the connecting flight and got home just before midnight.
I have to say that at times I felt that I was in a third world country. An hour in line at the Atlanta airport followed by 6 1/2 hours on hold with Delta.
I love traveling and am pretty flexible, but I don’t think I will be flying again for awhile. Just absurd what I went through.
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Your travails helped inspire my list. I used to be envious of others who had a wealth of family and friends to visit and who traveled the world. (I got husband to move to San Diego and here he stopped.) But now that’s causing as many woes as joys for so many of you. 
I was wondering this myself
I would rather drive 20 hours somewhere than spend hours in an airport, airplane and possible shuttle service. I won’t have to deal with un vaxed, chin wearing people or those who are clearly giving the finger to flight attendants trying to do their job. And why should I have to add duct tape to my carry on bag to subdue the frickin idiot on the plane. And yes, I would have no problem doing that.
Road trip.
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We flew to Tahiti in May. We used a test place that gave us results the same day. We paid over $200 but had our results by 10 pm the day we tested. My daughter and son-in-law found a place that was less $ and they had results in 24 hours.
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So…what happened??