‘Message from Samantha:
I know many people are worried about getting home. I am snowed under with the amount of emails with mainly the same questions, so please do not email me if the answer is here:
If you have a booking with any airline from next week and into April, please contact your carrier and ask to be moved to an earlier flight, that will leave this week. If you choose to stay and wait until your booked flight, you WILL be stuck in Madeira for an indefinite period.
I feel I have to make this now blunt. Madeira is closed for business. It is that simple. Airlines are running NOW to repatriate you all NOW. They are NOT going to be flying in at the end of the month and into April with an EMPTY plane to collect those handfuls of passengers that have ignored that we are in the middle of a Pandemic and Madeira is in a State of Emergency, with restrictions to our movements, which have been tightened up over the last few days.
I cannot stress this enough now. Please do not ask me about May and beyond as I simple do not know, along with everyone else – what the future months will bring. Tobi posted the image of available flights today with airlines where you can still purchase tickets. Again, please only email me, when you have exhausted all your own avenues of resolving your flight plans…that’s where I can assist you when all else fails.
Safe Journeys home and look forward to seeing you when Madeira is open again.’
As Sam says, if you need to get home do it now, if you have a place to stay here, and can afford to stay then that is OK, you are welcome to stay, and probably much safer than anywhere else in Europe. Remember if you do stay, check that you have everything you need for the coming months, especially medication.
There is a BA flight tomorrow, and although not on the board a TUI flight to East Midlands, one blog reader has contacted TUI to see if this flight is still going, and they say it is. If this changes they say you will be notified by text or email.
Also if you are staying in places with other tourists, can you forward this on to them, to make sure they all know the situation.