Predictions of when international flights may resume/bans lifted

[CaptJCool]

The Finance Minister doesn't expect international travel to resume before next year: International travel still a long way off

With all the uncertainty when he was asked if he expected to resume mid next year he refused to speculate on a specific date.

One wonders how much longer QF can hold out hope of resuming international flights at the end of October. Whilst there are many on AFF that are furious with the restrictions, governments at all levels are well aware that we are in the minority.

Yea I saw that just now

who woulda thunk?

the positive take-out from this is that we do have international flights between Australia and New Zealand

The other lesson we might contemplate is that this constant picking up of dregs trickling down from hotel quarantine shows us that trickle down economics is a real failure ..... while we don’t want to share the virus neither shall we share the wealth. Yea yea left field but sometimes thats where the new ways of thinking begin

 

[mviy]

The Feds initially proposed suppression, but the states decided elimination was the way to go and every state government that has gone to the polls has been re-elected during COVID.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The Feds initially proposed suppression, but the states decided elimination was the way to go and every state government that has gone to the polls has been re-elected during COVID.

Without a vaccine, somewhat understandable. I'm not sure we can extrapolate voting preferences in a pre- and post-vaccine environment?

 

[dajop]

To Australia, anyone outside of the country now is barely considered Australian - that's the simple answer. Its pretty disgraceful and there is nothing we can do about it. There are thousands of us to be reunited with family - does the government care? Not one iota. Vaccinated or not, doesn't matter.

I don't think it's too hard to come with some ideas to at least demonstrate some compassion. Two examples:

1) Allowing people into HQ to be with their loved ones if all vaccinated, could source some 2BR apartments and bring in residents to join visiting Australians, with the proviso that they have to stay for 2 weeks in quarantine after the visitor departs (unless the visitor remains for 2 weeks and all turns in negative tests at end of 2 weeks). Exclude high risk countries from the scheme.
2) Setting up a separate stream of HQ for low risk countries (ie. China, Singapore, Taiwan, Brunei, Hong Kong? Fiji? some other pacific islands ), with dedicated flights (no transit passengers), testing on arrival and separate hotels outside current caps. Do this for 2 months, collect good robust data (haha) and if after 2 months no positives are detected, then relax further. You could include "returning" or visiting Australians, as well as students in this scheme, and if successful allow vaccinated Australians to depart and return under the scheme too.

Unfortunately the government(s) seem to be bereft of ideas other than permanent HQ for anyone that's been outside the ANZ bubble.

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

I don't think it's too hard to come with some ideas to at least demonstrate some compassion. Two examples:

1) Allowing people into HQ to be with their loved ones if all vaccinated, could source some 2BR apartments and bring in residents to join visiting Australians, with the proviso that they have to stay for 2 weeks in quarantine after the visitor departs (unless the visitor remains for 2 weeks and all turns in negative tests at end of 2 weeks). Exclude high risk countries from the scheme.
2) Setting up a separate stream of HQ for low risk countries (ie. China, Singapore, Taiwan, Brunei, Hong Kong? Fiji? some other pacific islands ), with dedicated flights (no transit passengers), testing on arrival and separate hotels outside current caps. Do this for 2 months, collect good robust data (haha) and if after 2 months no positives are detected, then relax further. You could include "returning" or visiting Australians, as well as students in this scheme, and if successful allow vaccinated Australians to depart and return under the scheme too.

Unfortunately the government(s) seem to be bereft of ideas other than permanent HQ for anyone that's been outside the ANZ bubble.

Wouldn’t this take away places from stranded Aussie citizens, permanent residents and families wanting to return home?

 

[burmans]

Without a vaccine, somewhat understandable. I'm not sure we can extrapolate voting preferences in a pre- and post-vaccine environment?

Agree, though at current rate mid 2022 may be right as to when we get to 'full' vaccination.

 

[dajop]

Wouldn’t this take away places from stranded Aussie citizens, permanent residents and families wanting to return home?

#1 could manage by not counting the Australians based here (that would be joining the returning or visiting Australians from overseas) in the cap.

#2 wouldn't, suggested it to be outside cap, and thus free up places in the riskier hotel quarantine program.

 

[Lynda2475]

This is exactly what I suggested a few days ago:

Government considering using Howard Springs exclusively for Australians returning from India

The government is considering using Howard Springs to only quarantine Indian returned travellers, as a way to expedite getting people out of the country when the travel ban ends.

www.abc.net.au

 

[mviy]

The reason that the list of those wanting to come home isn't getting any shorter is that the caps are too low. If the caps were even 2-3x what they are now the backlog possibly could be cleared, but there has been a lack of effort to solve the problem.

 

[Pushka]

The reason that the list of those wanting to come home isn't getting any shorter is that the caps are too low. If the caps were even 2-3x what they are now the backlog possibly could be cleared, but there has been a lack of effort to solve the problem.

Out of sight out of mind. And the majority of Australians in Australia concur.

 

[dajop]

The reason that the list of those wanting to come home isn't getting any shorter is that the caps are too low. If the caps were even 2-3x what they are now the backlog possibly could be cleared, but there has been a lack of effort to solve the problem.

It’s complicated. There are caps (eg Victoria) remaining unfilled (I think I read by about 200/week). But the within 72hr testing and at least 72 hr online form requirements make it difficult for airlines to fill unmet caps.

Next week you can buy multiple economy seats into Australia from Singapore (~$1200), Europe (~$1700) and LAX ($2400, but also $1700 via Canada/Japan if allowed.)

Three things I think:
- A lot of “stranded” Aussie’s in India who can’t get home and have temporarily been removed so might be making it easier for others (the number in India is 9000+ from memory).
- A lot of people remaining overseas want to stay there but do want to come home to visit loved ones who they haven’t seen for 18 months or more - but have circumstances (financial or related to leave etc) that prevent them from doing so
- People stuck in far flung places that don’t have easy/cheap access to commercial flights nor access to charters.

 

[Lynda2475]

Yesterday I posted details of the HQ under utilization by state on another thread, but will repeat again. So given nothing coming out of India, flights originating elsewhere should be abel to take more passengers, as there is quite a bit of available capacity atm in HQ and 2 states which need to make more capacity available.

Australia’s quarantine hotel rooms empty as India flight ban continues

Many of Australia’s quarantine facilities for returned overseas travellers are far from full as the Indian flight ban continues to leave thousands stranded.

www.smh.com.au

From the above article:

Howard Springs:

Figures obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age show the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs quarantine facility, which prompted the ban last month after all but one of 48 infected residents had travelled from India, is only at roughly a third of its capacity.

The Howard Springs facility has two parts: the centre for national resilience for repatriated Australians, and a second place for other arrivals including returned defence personnel and international ship crew.

That centre, which has space for 850 return travellers and will expand to accommodate 2000 people by the end of the month, is housing just over 250 repatriated travellers. Another roughly 150 people were also completing quarantine at the other part of the facility.

NSW:

NSW’s Special Health Accommodation, which houses positive cases and returned travellers with other complex health needs separately to the police-managed hotel quarantine system, has 753 bedrooms across 639 apartments.

On Tuesday, there were 546 patients in the accommodation, leaving more than 100 apartments vacant.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian has said NSW Police consider 5000 or, at most, 5500 people in the overall hotel quarantine system at any one time to be a safe amount.

The state has a cap of 3010 international arrivals a week and there have been 47 overseas cases in the past seven days.

Vic:

Victoria’s hotel quarantine system is running close to its capacity. It has a weekly cap of 1000 arrivals and the state has about 1800 people staying in its quarantine and health hotels. <---- this is 30% of NSW, the safe operating point for Vic should be at least 90% of the NSW total based on population.

QLD:

Queensland is using just over half of the quarantine hotels it had in operation in August, with about 1200 rooms occupied across 16 hotels. COVID-19 patients are transferred to hospital. <---- again seriously low given population.

SA

In South Australia, roughly a fifth of the more than 1000 rooms in Adelaide’s medi-hotels, which house all returned travellers, are vacant. There are 32 cases in the Tom’s Court Hotel, which only houses COVID-19 patients.

Last month, when there were 30 cases in the hotel, the state’s chief health officer said there were 12 remaining rooms. However, capacity depends on whether cases are travelling solo or as families.

WA:

A spokesperson for the State Health Incident Coordination Centre said there were 1895 people in quarantine in Western Australia as of Monday afternoon, of which 26 have tested positive.

 

[dajop]

Howard Springs:

Figures obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age show the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs quarantine facility, which prompted the ban last month after all but one of 48 infected residents had travelled from India, is only at roughly a third of its capacity.

Have always wondered why can't government work with airlines to allow touch and go flights that dump 1/2 a plane load of passengers in DRW enroute to the eastern seaboard? I guess airline crew hours, but from places like SIN, KUL, MNL and even HKG, could be manageable.

I guess these sorts of flights wouldn't provide the PR boost that that great Aussie airline Qantas bringing home our stranded Aussies does...

 

[Lynda2475]

Stopping Australians from travelling overseas violates fundamental rights, Federal Court hears

The federal court hears the government's ban on citizens travelling overseas infringes on the fundamental rights of Australians in a challenge brought by a conservative think tank.

www.abc.net.au

 

[mviy]

Will be interesting to see when the next hearing is. No orders have been posted yet, but presumably will come in the next business day or so.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Have always wondered why can't government work with airlines to allow touch and go flights that dump 1/2 a plane load of passengers in DRW enroute to the eastern seaboard? I guess airline crew hours, but from places like SIN, KUL, MNL and even HKG, could be manageable.

I guess these sorts of flights wouldn't provide the PR boost that that great Aussie airline Qantas bringing home our stranded Aussies does...

Agree.

Instead of sending over an empty Qantas jet to pick up pax for a one way flight LHR-DRW, SQ could have brought pax from all European cities to SIN and joined them on to a single plane to DRW from there. SQ could have flown the SIN-DRW-SIN roundtrip with the same set of crew.

Turns the 17 hour QF empty flight SYD-LHR into a 4 hour empty flight DRW-SIN and covers half a dozen exit points in Europe instead of one.

 

[dajop]

Turns the 17 hour QF empty flight SYD-LHR into a 4 hour empty flight DRW-SIN and covers half a dozen exit points in Europe instead of one.

Way too sensible I'm afraid!

 

[Bigskytraveller]

I think facilitating hours that keeps Qantas pilots for the 787s certified and generating some cash flow for the national carrier given what restrictions are doing to their business is probably written off as a national good. I think it’s fine we use Qantas, we just need to be a bit smarter about all this.

As a vaccinated Australian that’s living overseas and seeing first hand what the vaccines are doing to numbers (and coming back around July due to a new job) I really wish the Aus govts got their act together re some more options like home quarantine, vaccine passes, test for early release for vaccinated people etc.

A major element in relocating back is the ongoing restrictions - I haven’t seen family for 12 months and another 12 months or more potentiality based on Mr Birmingham’s announcements today just isn’t viable to be separated.

 

[Comoman]

This is not good news - a small extract:

"Australia will remain closed to the majority of international arrivals until at least the start of 2022, the Government has said.

"We won't be seeing borders flung open at the start of next year with great ease," Finance Minister Simon Birmingham told The Australian on Thursday, citing "uncertainties that exist not just in the speed of the vaccine rollout but also the extent of its effectiveness to different variants of Covid, the duration of its longevity and effectiveness."

This marks a delay in earlier plans for the country, which is behind on its vaccination drive target, to open its borders by October of this year, presenting a major blow to those who have been separated from their overseas loved ones for more than a year and counting.

When international travel does restart, it is likely to begin with 'bubbles' shared with nations including Singapore, Japan, and Vietnam, Trade Minister Dan Tehan stated last week.

It comes as New Zealand today stopped quarantine-free travel to Australia's state of New South Wales following the discovery of two cases announced in Sydney.

Health department secretary Brendan Murphy said in January: "Even if we have a lot of the population vaccinated, we don't know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus. And it's likely that quarantine will continue for some time."

Travel news latest: Australia closed to tourists until 2022

 

[hb13]

None of this is a surprise, and IMO, 2045/25 is best case scenario for opening of Intl borders more broadly to Europe/USA/UK. As well as the UK has done with vaccinations, and mind you Europe is catching up really quickly, I don't think those of us in Europe will be exempt from HQ for a good few years yet - even if fully vaccinated.

Regarding Qantas, I don't understand why they don't call it quits on their international operations. Domestically they're doing very well, but it costs a lot of money to continue to hold onto their A380 fleet, keep paying for rent on lounges overseas, maintain licences and landing slots at airports etc. They think Project Sunrise is still a go - when there is virtually no chance this can happen this decade.

I think a good starting point is that they come out and stop selling seats for October this year, because that is just not happening, and it won't be happening in 2022/23 either.