New Zealand Travel Bubble Announcement

[jakeseven7]

Anyway back on topic, I wonder if Scomo will grow a pair and tell NZ that the bubble will reopen when it is reciprocated

After all Australia has been community transmission free longer than NZ

 

[burmans]

Personally I think an argument about whether NZ or Taiwan are best is just looking for an argument. In my view both have done great in a field where plenty have done terribly and that’s what should be getting the attention rather than splitting hairs on technicalities.

 

[burmans]

Anyway back on topic, I wonder if Scomo will grow a pair and tell NZ that the bubble will reopen when it is reciprocated

After all Australia has been community transmission free longer than NZ

This comment implies this is some tit for tat argument between countries. Ignoring the fact that this would be somewhat immature for a politician (yeah I know, happens) it’s just not the case.

Scommo is doing this because he wants the economy, in particular tourism, to open up here. He doesn’t give a damn about the NZ economy nor the NZ tourism industry! Closing the border as you suggest is cutting off his nose to spite his face and while not always a fan he’s more astute than that.

 

[glasszon]

This comment implies this is some tit for tat argument between countries. Ignoring the fact that this would be somewhat immature for a politician (yeah I know, happens) it’s just not the case.

Scommo is doing this because he wants the economy, in particular tourism, to open up here. He doesn’t give a damn about the NZ economy nor the NZ tourism industry! Closing the border as you suggest is cutting off his nose to spite his face and while not always a fan he’s more astute than that.

While I agree with your first sentence, but how would tourism open up in Australia under a one-way bubble? Surely Kiwis won't be interested to have a holiday in Australia then having to quarantine for 14 days back home in NZ for a few thousand dollars?

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

While I agree with your first sentence, but how would tourism open up in Australia under a one-way bubble? Surely Kiwis won't be interested to have a holiday in Australia then having to quarantine for 14 days back home in NZ for a few thousand dollars?

It might have been useful for NZ sporting teams in Australia to fly back as needed. Who knows they might have got a NZ exemption or variation to their quarantine requirements

 

[burmans]

While I agree with your first sentence, but how would tourism open up in Australia under a one-way bubble? Surely Kiwis won't be interested to have a holiday in Australia then having to quarantine for 14 days back home in NZ for a few thousand dollars?

Personally can't answer the why but from all reports there have been a fair swag of Kiwis who have made that trip even knowing they will need to quarantine on return, I know at least two personally.

And we shouldn't underemphasise the importance of this as a signaling exercise that we are ready to open up as an 'encouragement' for NZ to reciprocate. Much the same as locally with NSW being the ones signaling 'we are open for business'.

 

[Kiwi_Flyer]

Taiwan 31 cases per million population,only 3.3 per million local transmission.Deaths 0.28 per million.
NZ- 492 cases per million. deaths 5 per million.

Yeh must be fake.

A significant proportion of NZ's cases are recent arrivals. For all the media hype numbers of local transmission have been very low.

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

A significant proportion of NZ's cases are recent arrivals. For all the media hype numbers of local transmission have been very low.

But I don’t think you are suggesting the differences of more than 450 cases per million and about 4 deaths per million are resulting from recent arrivals....

 

[DaveB]

So our daughter travelled over from NZ from 4-29 January so we could see her and our seven month granddaughter for the first time.
She booked last November the then last available space available in the NZ managed hotel isolation program requiring her to return to AKL on QF143 that departed yesterday. She had a fully paid business class seat allocated 8K for her and baby.
Late Thursday evening less than 12 hours before the flight departure time, we received an SMS and email message advising that QF "had to cancel your booking on QF143 from Sydney to Auckland on 29 January due to operational requirements.
We know for sure the flight still went ahead and from NZ hotel quarantine blog sites, our daughter was far from being the only one affected by a last minute booking cancellation.
News today coming out of NZ is that The Wiggles received on Friday a special exemption into the NZ hotel quarantine system. It appears QF bumped numerous booked passengers from yesterday's flight in order to carry the Wiggles party.
By 8:30am Friday morning, QF had already moved the booking to their next SYD-AKL flight being this Monday and bizaarly also receiving an email from the NZ hotel isolation system advising of a new hotel voucher to match the new Monday booking. How this happened before staff at QF admin had even started work is crazy with the Hobart reservations staff contacted earlier unable to assist with this issue and would refer it to QF head office staff starting from 9am.

 

[milehighclub]

News today coming out of NZ is that The Wiggles received on Friday a special exemption into the NZ hotel quarantine system. It appears QF bumped numerous booked passengers from yesterday's flight in order to carry the Wiggles party.

"A Managed Isolation and Quarantine spokesperson told the Herald the children's group has been granted vouchers for March." The exemption was only granted yesterday and the first concert isn't until March 19th. I don't think they would need to be in NZ for a month before hand.

 

[DaveB]

QF definitely dumped a lot of passengers including my daughter from yesterday's QF143.
In addition to the 14 day hotel isolation period, NZ also now requires returning Kiwis to isolate at home for a further 5 days followed by a third COVID test. That pretty much locks upo anyone now arriving for most of February.
The NZ hotel isolation system is next to impossible to make contact with other than via email. They also do not permit you to extend your voucher booking beyond 24 hours unless your airline does the arrangement following as flight cancellation. We initially had a booking with VA which the airline then cancelled deciding rightly to delay their NZ restart. Our daughter could not reschedule that voucher having to cancel the hotel booking and luckily grab the last available January date which fell on one of the two days QF flys to AKL.
QF had to have organised the new passengers on the flight in conjunction with NZ hotel isolation. Rescheduling our daughters hotel voucher from Friday to Monday within 10 hours of us receiving notice of the flight booking cancellation and nearly two hours before the plane had even departed.

 

[Kiwi_Flyer]

But I don’t think you are suggesting the differences of more than 450 cases per million and about 4 deaths per million are resulting from recent arrivals....

No I'm not, but overall 71% of cases are arrivals or related to MIQ; only 29% community transmission. The proportion community transition is falling all the time as very nearly all recent cases are arrivals.

 

[drron]

No I'm not, but overall 71% of cases are arrivals or related to MIQ; only 29% community transmission. The proportion community transition is falling all the time as very nearly all recent cases are arrivals.

And Taiwan is less than 10% community transmission.

 

[NZflygirl]

QF definitely dumped a lot of passengers including my daughter from yesterday's QF143.
In addition to the 14 day hotel isolation period, NZ also now requires returning Kiwis to isolate at home for a further 5 days followed by a third COVID test. That pretty much locks upo anyone now arriving for most of February.
The NZ hotel isolation system is next to impossible to make contact with other than via email. They also do not permit you to extend your voucher booking beyond 24 hours unless your airline does the arrangement following as flight cancellation. We initially had a booking with VA which the airline then cancelled deciding rightly to delay their NZ restart. Our daughter could not reschedule that voucher having to cancel the hotel booking and luckily grab the last available January date which fell on one of the two days QF flys to AKL.
QF had to have organised the new passengers on the flight in conjunction with NZ hotel isolation. Rescheduling our daughters hotel voucher from Friday to Monday within 10 hours of us receiving notice of the flight booking cancellation and nearly two hours before the plane had even departed.

That’s disappointing but at least it hasn’t been delayed by long. The MIQ slots are tough to get.

I was under the impression the wiggles allocation came from some contingency spots rather than taking them from others. At least that’s the official word.

I did see a lot of reshuffling of the MIQ calendar going on recently but not for those dates.

Bit off topic but I’d love to know if your daughter can confirm that Qantas aren’t carrying international transit passengers in the Syd-Akl direction. Flying only twice a week I presume crew are flying domestic routes inbetween so, no exposure to high risk passengers is preferable. Whenever I’ve called Qantas they agents have no idea.

 

[jakeseven7]

I was under the impression the wiggles allocation came from some contingency spots rather than taking them from others. At least that’s the official word.

It’s great PR spin isn’t it they obviously went to the same PR school QLD Health went to!

 

[milehighclub]

I actually think QF143 may have operated as a freight only flight and that everyone was moved to tomorrow for 2 reasons.
- MIQ has had to reshuffle passengers due to the Pullman being out of use temporarily.
- Because the rules around isolation for airlines change about every 30 seconds and crew who operate to NZ are currently not exempt from quarantine, they have had to get a crew together who are in the pool willing to isolate. Interesting to see that it is a 787 tomorrow and not an A330. 787 crew are the pool of crew who are willing to self isolate after a flight.

Bit off topic but I’d love to know if your daughter can confirm that Qantas aren’t carrying international transit passengers in the Syd-Akl direction. Flying only twice a week I presume crew are flying domestic routes inbetween so, no exposure to high risk passengers is preferable.

They are not carrying any transit passengers as crew who do these flights are not subject to self isolation when operating to NZ (when NZ is treated as a green zone)

 

[DaveB]

Bit off topic but I’d love to know if your daughter can confirm that Qantas aren’t carrying international transit passengers in the Syd-Akl direction. Flying only twice a week I presume crew are flying domestic routes inbetween so, no exposure to high risk passengers is preferable. Whenever I’ve called Qantas they agents have no idea.

Our daughter has been an NZ resident for three years.

My wife attempted a couple of times in 2020 to get emergency access to fly to NZ to assist the family at the birth of our granddaughter. Despite showing we had flights booked for that purpose and now seeking only one of us, a firm no can do by the NZ government.

The NZ government and some other states government requiring 28 days free of community transmissions is pretty much impossible if you have significant numbers of returning travellers (Sydney has taken 45% total thus far) or have a foreign diplomat population who the government can not enforce them to take mandatory quarantine. A good bet how the Avalon cluster developed in conjunction with the relaxing of social distancing rules at restaurants and clubs.

 

[DaveB]

I actually think QF143 may have operated as a freight only flight and that everyone was moved to tomorrow for 2 reasons.
- MIQ has had to reshuffle passengers due to the Pullman being out of use temporarily.
- Because the rules around isolation for airlines change about every 30 seconds and crew who operate to NZ are currently not exempt from quarantine, they have had to get a crew together who are in the pool willing to isolate. Interesting to see that it is a 787 tomorrow and not an A330. 787 crew are the pool of crew who are willing to self isolate after a flight.


They are not carrying any transit passengers as crew who do these flights are not subject to self isolation when operating to NZ (when NZ is treated as a green zone)

Cheers for that. We were told by NZ reservation staff that many Kiwis were delaying the AKL-SYD leg due to the 72 hour hotel quarantine even though the Oz government was footing the bill. That didn't make much sense to me annoying passengers flying the other way who typically would have needed to have made long term plans to booked

That might also explain why NZ also cancelled its Friday BNE-AKL flight which we tried to get on. Not sure it it still flew due though Saturday's SYD-AKL definitely did.
The reissued eticket states another 330 though still unable to see new booking details online. Seat allocated 5A by the Hobart staff so least another widebody.

 

[Must...Fly!]

From ABC Live Blog

"As you know, the three cases all originated from transmission within hotel quarantine at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland. The AHPPC has also noted that all close contacts of these three New Zealand cases have returned negative test results and there have been no further cases found to date in the casual contacts, in the previous residents of the hotel or in the staff of the hotel," Professor Kidd said.

"Green zone flights from New Zealand into Australia are now judged to be sufficiently low risk, given New Zealand's strong public health response to COVID-19.

"Given there is still a small risk of further associated cases being detected and with an abundance of caution, I've recommended to the Australian Government that pre- and post-flight screening be implemented for all safe travel zone flights from New Zealand for the next 10 days."

This is good news and I hope it rubs off a bit on state governments to stop being so absurd with their own border restrictions.

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

Some chatter of a Tasmania - New Zealand Travel bubble - perhaps even two-way

State set to open flights to New Zealand

New Zealand could get direct air links to Tasmania as early as next month as the Australian state peruses a local travel bubble.

www.news.com.au