COVID-19, Omicron and international travel: What it's like travelling from Australia to the US right now

Sydney Airport feels vaguely familiar this afternoon; like a town you used to visit before a bushfire came through and burnt it black and stripped it bare. There's no-one here, and there's hardly a shop or café open. I guess I can forget about changing any left-over Australian dollars to Greenbacks. This may well be Australia's largest airport, but tonight there's only four planes flying out of it.

Airlines advise international travellers arrive four hours early for their flights. I toe the line, mostly because I need to produce a negative PCR COVID-19 test, or I can't fly. It costs me $150 when I pre-pay, a higher rate because I want the results within an hour. Histopath have their testing facility about 25 metres from Departure Gate E. On arrival, I discover tests are now going for $120, and you can opt for a test with a 90 minute wait for the result for just $70.

Oh well, at least the service is impressively efficient. A staff member rushes across to me and takes a receipt I've printed out. Within 60 seconds I'm sitting at a desk with a lab technician donned in a face shield scraping my nose and throat.

Waiting is the hardest part. I'm sitting a few metres beyond the check-in line for my flight to Los Angeles and I see there's only one passenger in line. Then there's two, then three, then seven. I get a text message and an email simultaneously 33 minutes after my test is done with my result displayed: NEGATIVE. Phew. Now I just have to walk over and get a print-out of it (you'll require a printed copy of your result).

There's 15 passengers waiting now. Which doesn't sound like many, right? Well, times they are a-changing, folks. Airline staff must examine all your paperwork with a fine tooth comb: your international vaccination certificate and PCR COVID-19 test, and the US Government's contact tracing form and a statutory declaration assuring them you've been vaccinated (just in case a Government-sanctioned international vaccination certificate isn't enough). I'm in line for 30 minutes.

Then, and only then, can I check-in (another 35 minutes). At least it only takes me four minutes to clear both Immigration and security. Four minutes. Boarding starts 45 minutes before take-off, we've just had all our paperwork painstakingly examined, now we have to show most of it again.

Los Angeles International Airport is unearthly quiet when I land, God knows why (I'm here the day before Thanksgiving). But while the line-up might be short, it's painfully slow. Who knows how long this will take on a busy day.

An angry woman in a blue uniform yells at me to keep moving when I slow the queue to take my jumper off (there's still no a/c, or if there is, it's barely functioning, yep you're back in LAX). Ah yes, it's all coming back to me now, but it feels kind of different at the same time. For one, there's an old bloke with grey hair and a crinkly smile in the photo frame on the wall where the orange-skinned bloke with the puffy cheeks used to be.