Approximately 30 days before each planned arrival date for NH20, if your student's placement has been approved for arrival, you will receive an email from your local Field Staff indicating whether or not your student’s placement has been approved for the next planned arrival date.
If you have a new Arrivals Coordinator this year, please respond to us and cc them on your response and/or forward this email to them so they have this information pertinent to the orientation. Affiliating an Arrival Coordinator to your team.
Arrival Dates Currently Scheduled for NH20
First Arrival: September 10, 2020
Second Arrival: September 24, 2020
International Arrivals
With the impact of COVID on international and domestic travel, we are asking our partners to purchase through tickets to the Host Distribution Site (HDS) linked to each student. The HDS is the major airport within your team. Please note that, with through ticketing, many teams will have domestic flights arriving later in the evening as it is often impossible to fly non-stop to your HDS.
Some AFS Sending Partners will not be able to through-ticket based on flight availability which may mean that your participant will need to overnight in a major gateway prior to boarding a domestic flight the following day. TLC will communicate exactly when your should expect your student to arrive to your HDS.
Given geographic size, some teams have more than one airport associated with the team. Other teams have multiple major airports within/next to their teams (i.e., EWR/JFK). The Travel and Logistics Coordination (TLC) team has worked with the Field staff to confirm and link students.
In advance of your student’s arrival, your area team (Hosting Coordinator and/or Area Team Chair) will be requested to review (or assign one of the volunteers within the team to review) the following:
- Review the HDS/Airport link for your student(s) to ensure they are linked to the correct arrival airport.
- This is found on the placement detail screen in Global Link; If they are not, please contact TLC immediately.
- For NH20, HDS’ have been updated to reflect the airport code(s) for your team.
- In past years, we have used some made up codes for charter buses or to delineate teams sharing an airport.
- As our partners will be purchasing tickets to these locations, they need to be an official airport code.
- All international and domestic travel will be visible in GL/My AFS as in previous years.
- We expect that international travel will be visible approximately two weeks prior to arrival but could be days before our arrival date as partners will wait until a student has their visa in hand.
- To ensure options for flights and reduce the use of small airports, host families will be expected to drive up to 2 – 2 ½ hours for pick-ups.
- Once your state/team has received the “green light” to host:
- TLC will link your student to a start/end date range. The end date is on/or about two weeks after school ends. Note: Return tickets will also depart from the HDS
- AFS Sending Partner will be sent an email to purchase the domestic ticket to the HDS. Once the ticket is issued, the HDS cannot be changed.
- Some partners may wait until the student(s) have their visa before purchasing tickets
Travel Representative
Starting with the NH20 cycle, each area team must have one volunteer that is affiliated as the Travel Rep regardless of the airport pick up/arrival orientation model you chose to do. With smaller numbers, for many teams, this may also be the Orientation Coordinator. Having a Travel Rep affiliation allows TLC to easily pull a list of who is responsible for arrivals out of Global Link and notify this person of travel information/delays. The job description can be found here. This is the person that TLC will contact on the day of travel, even if they are not doing the airport meet/greet.
Arrival Orientations
For guidance on the Arrival Orientation, including updating your Arrival Orientation details in the Activity Module and linking students please refer to the Arrivals Orientation page.
Area Teams are kindly requested to ensure that their Travel Representative, orientation coordinator and pick-up volunteer are confirmed with TLC and/or affiliated in Global Link two weeks before a scheduled arrival.