In New York, relatives separated for months finally find the “human connection”

AFP, published on Monday 08 November 2021 at 9:30 p.m.

“I have such a hard time believing it. Two and a half years!” Alison Henry ran to her grandson Liam as soon as she saw him at the New York airport, and hugged him for a long time, with tears in her eyes. “It’s so emotional”.

They have spoken to each other every week since the implementation of health restrictions at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 which drastically limited the arrival to the United States of passengers from several countries, including the United Kingdom.

“But it’s the human connection, the one you feel when you have someone in front of you, that I missed the most,” Liam says, his eyes shining above a tall beard sticking out of the tree. his mask, who has lived in Brooklyn for several years.

With the reopening of the American borders to all vaccinated passengers on Monday, he has plenty of places to introduce his parents and his grandmother Patricia, who did not hesitate to make the trip despite her almost 88 years old. But mostly they plan to spend time together.

– “The United States reopens” –

“Every day we watched the news, and we waited for the United States to reopen,” recalls Alison. They booked their tickets as soon as the announcement was made official.

At Terminal 7 at JFK Airport in New York City, the first passengers on British Airways’ first flight since the border reopened are greeted with applause, company-colored red, white and blue balloons, and shaped cookies. yellow taxis, big apples or the Statue of Liberty, three symbols of the metropolis.

Businessmen are the first to land.

“It’s great to be back”, “it’s fantastic”, several of them say to the cameras installed for the occasion.

Then come the passengers eager to reunite with their loved ones: a grandmother who has never seen her grandson before. A man who waits with a bouquet of red roses for a friend he has not seen for 11 years, a very long wait that has been further delayed by the pandemic. And another aunt who finds her two nieces and is planning a big family dinner tonight.

– 730 days –

After 730 days of separation, Jill Chambers can finally hug her sister and nephews. “I’m so happy,” she repeats over and over again, her eyes red. Before finding her, her sister, Louise Erebara, had warned: “I’m going to cry like a hysteric”.

“It was terrible not knowing when we were going to meet again because of the Covid, not knowing if the borders were ever going to reopen,” she says.

For Max, a young man in a hurry to reunite with his friends and family, this time of separation was also “very, very hard”. “We communicated on Zoom but it’s not the same as in real life,” he told AFP before rushing towards the doors of the exit.

For the occasion, British Airways gave the flight the prestigious number “BA1”, the one attributed to the legendary Concorde when the plane was still flying between London and New York.

The trip was “fantastic”, assures the general manager of the company, Sean Doyle, who also made his return to New York for the first time since the beginning of 2020.

British Airways has never completely stopped its traffic, but this first flight allowing all vaccinated passengers to come to American soil “is an important symbolic step,” he told AFP.

For the company, transatlantic links are essential to turnover. “We believe that demand will be back (to its pre-pandemic level) in 2023 or 2024,” says Sean Doyle.

For at least one client, reopening borders is not necessarily a godsend.

“I had two great years in which I didn’t have to travel,” says Tom Hargreaves, among the first business class passengers to get off the plane. “Now I have to get back to it.”

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