Seems like this thread has attracted some comments bordering on xenophobic. Let's hope that none of us are ever in a situation that requires evacuation because of civil unrest or natural disaster. Thank heavens that, warts and all, Australia is a compassionate country.
Just to clarify my position isn't that we shouldn't rescue people in harms way, but rather the extent that we provide assistance. Ethically, we have a moral obligation to rescue citizens in harm's way but I don't think that should mean bringing them all the way home, particularly if they don't want or need that level of assistance. Ensuring Aussies stuck in an active war zone can secure safe passage to a country not in conflict be it Cyprus or UAE is all that should be provided morally and under the letter of the law. And frankly I think all of this effort organizing repatriation flights back to Australia is diverting resources and focus away from the key point in this mission: getting people out of harm's way. I doubt anyone thinks that Cyprus or the UAE for that matter is any less safe than Australia.
Even if some may think that they should be repatriated to Australia with the government footing the bill, I would argue that it would likely be more cost effective and logistically practical to simply cover the cost of these Aussies travelling on whatever commercial airline can get them home. If that means flying Emirates from Dubai to Perth so be it. Remember folks, the global route network can handle the load of people fleeing Lebanon from a third country like the UAE or Cyprus. There are tons of flights from tons of airlines that can all trace a path to Australia. But there's only a handful of dedicated flights the commonwealth can secure for repatriation.
As others have pointed out, people can and do travel to nations that are marked as being unsafe or marked as do not travel for a variety of reasons. Perhaps more should be done to put safeguards in place so that people booking travel to these destinations are warned of the potential consequences, including the very real possibility that the government may not be able to assist them if things go completely out of control. But ultimately it is people's choice to travel to destinations. And by the way, people have different sensibilities of where to travel to. Whilst I have no qualms visiting South Africa or Egypt, I have my reservations about visiting Mexico or China. Meanwhile I suspect I could find someone in the community who has no qualms visiting Mexico or China but is weary of visiting Egypt.
In terms of Qantas and the impact it will have on its operations (which I think is a main theme of this thread), I would argue it could have an impact on global operations, particularly if this becomes more than a one-off gesture which the government makes it out to be. For instance, someone noted that there could potentially be anywhere from thousands to perhaps tens of thousands of Aussies presently in Lebanon awaiting repatriation. If that is the case, and supposing the government is willing to honour those requests it would not surprise me if we see a dozen such reparation flights organized over the coming weeks. How that impacts the Qantas network is something worthy of consideration. For instance, we could safely conclude that if push came to shove flights to/from Europe won't be impacted by these repatriation flights since that would result in delays and cancellations which Qantas would have to pay out 600 Euros in entitlement under EU261/UK261 given it was a commercial decision made by the airline. So that to me suggests that if they were to impact flights on the network it might be flights to/from Asia or the U.S. where such consumer protection laws are not in force. Now maybe I am mistaken here and Qantas has additional airframes in storage they can deploy to satisfy this mission, but from the discussions so far it seems unlikely.
-RooFlyer88
