AFS students will travel to the domestic airport(s) linked to your team. Once a student is placed, our partners will be sent an email with the airport and arrival/departure dates. Given flight schedules/routing challenges, we expect that some students may not be able to be through-ticketed. Our Travel and Logistics Coordination team will work closely with our sending partners to provide guidance with bookings to ensure they meet our booking requirements. As most students will be through-ticketed, in many cases, their arrivals will be later in the evening. We will be sending out a more detailed 2021 Arrivals update in May.
AFS-USA has moved away from a gateway arrival travel model by having our partners book their participants to the area team airport(s). Volunteers and/or the host family may be expected to drive up to 2-2.5 hours to welcome their participant. We recognize that this will be a change for some teams and appreciate volunteers making any necessary arrangements with the host families. As a reminder, at least one volunteer must meet the student at the airport regardless of whether the host family plans to pick the student up.
Please remember that if you are doing the Arrival Orientation either virtually or on the weekend (Arrival Orientation guidelines are still being finalized for the 2021-22 school year), an AFS volunteer is still required to meet the student at the airport and provide the required documents to the student and host family.
Beginning in April, we will notify our partners of airports ("Host Distribution Sites") for all family confirmed placements. Some partners will book travel as they receive this information while others will wait until most of their students are placed. Therefore, while some participants’ travel details will be available in Global Link sooner, we expect that international flight details for all participants will be viewable in Global Link two weeks prior to arrival.