Travelling to Australia During COVID-19 (Discussion)

[shankvijay]

Has anyone been able to get Business travel exemption to travel out and get back in. I have a Business travel from Sydney to NYC - Fully Vaccinated with Pfizer and wanted to know if anyone had any success recently

 

[Pushka]

Has anyone been able to get Business travel exemption to travel out and get back in. I have a Business travel from Sydney to NYC - Fully Vaccinated with Pfizer and wanted to know if anyone had any success recently

Certainly possible and we had success. As explained in this thread, you need to have compelling business case and business plan why this travel is necessary for business development, and can't be managed online etc; show existing contacts, provide evidence that should you get stuck that our have the funds to wait and not need consular assistance;

 

[shankvijay]

Certainly possible and we had success. As explained in this thread, you need to have compelling business case and business plan why this travel is necessary for business development, and can't be managed online etc; show existing contacts, provide evidence that should you get stuck that our have the funds to wait and not need consular assistance;

Thanks for clarifying. Going through some threads. Really helpful

 

[Priscila]

Check with a friend who works for AC at YYZ. Flight number with 4 digits are not normal flight so hence >95% cargo flight using 787-9

Hi Ric,
My dog just flew out on this flight this morning from sydney. 2/01/2021. Was meant to leave yesterday but had issue and was rescheduled to today. Was taking to a jetpet representative before the flight and they mentioned that the flight was cargo only. Did you have a pet traveling on the same flight?

 

[PineappleSkip]

BTW, Welcome to AFF, @shankvijay and @Priscila

cheers skip

 

[Ric]

Hi Ric,
My dog just flew out on this flight this morning from sydney. 2/01/2021. Was meant to leave yesterday but had issue and was rescheduled to today. Was taking to a jetpet representative before the flight and they mentioned that the flight was cargo only. Did you have a pet traveling on the same flight?

Great to hear that! No, I don't have a pet flying out. I just checked that for Revenge who asked the question.

 

[Priscila]

Great to hear that! No, I don't have a pet flying out. I just checked that for Revenge who asked the question.

Great to hear that! No, I don't have a pet flying out. I just checked that for Revenge who asked the question.

Oops! Got confused on who asked the question
@Revenge did you send your dog in the same flight by any chance?

 

[Revenge]

Oops! Got confused on who asked the question
@Revenge did you send your dog in the same flight by any chance?

Hi @Priscila! Yes! Sounds like our dogs were on the same flight. Like you say, he was meant to fly out yesterday but it was delayed to today. I hope your dog and mine are getting along 11km above the Pacific ocean right now! I'm glad to has some company.

 

[Priscila]

@Revenge wow thats so cool. Nice to know she has company. What breed of dog is yours? Mine is a coughzu. where is your dogs final destination? Mine has to stay in vancouver for a couple days before flying to Toronto and have been wondering where they stay overnight.

 

[Revenge]

@Revenge wow thats so cool. Nice to know she has company. What breed of dog is yours? Mine is a coughzu. where is your dogs final destination? Mine has to stay in vancouver for a couple days before flying to Toronto and have been wondering where they stay overnight.

Cute! Bailey is a spoodle (cougherspaniel and poodle). His final destination is Victoria but luckily we have family in Vancouver who can pick him up and take him to Victoria so he doesn't have to do the last leg by plane.

 

[dajop]

The immediate thing I'm struggling with is SQ and Scoot coordinating. SQ reservations said they can't book the scoot segment themselves but were happy to ask permission to merge a Scoot SIN-SYD segment into an LHR-SIN segment with it all on one ticket (two PRNs on one e-ticket I assume). I assume that also means baggage would interline but I should ask that actually.

I pushed SQ to get the "put onto one ticket" permission now, and after a short while on hold they said they've done that and noted it on a held reservation but I'm not super confident it'll happen in the end. Probably, but didn't feel certain.

Meanwhile, Scoot tickets are not refundable and so far have only promised to look at the specifics and consider a refund if SQ fail to make the single ticket magic happen. We're a bit loath to spend an ominous 6660 AUD on the SIN-SYD segment without Scoot committing to give a refund if we called back a few hours after booking to say SQ were unable to merge it.

Did you resolve this? I'm a bit late to the party, but am surprised by this. We worked out If there are 3 or more seats available on Scoot, the seats go into inventory as SQ codeshare. We actually booked a SQ codeshare SIN-PER (on Scoot) then return on SQ, MEL-SIN. ScootPlus seats map as Premium Economy on SQ though, so I expect this would LHR-SIN be booked into Premium Economy as well.

[nb: This could also be bad advice on my behalf, as we got booted off the Scoot flight anyway and SQ cancelled our ticket (refunded within 4 days of agreeing to cancel ticket). ]

 

[manarh]

Did you resolve this? I'm a bit late to the party, but am surprised by this. We worked out If there are 3 or more seats available on Scoot, the seats go into inventory as SQ codeshare. We actually booked a SQ codeshare SIN-PER (on Scoot) then return on SQ, MEL-SIN. ScootPlus seats map as Premium Economy on SQ though, so I expect this would LHR-SIN be booked into Premium Economy as well.

[nb: This could also be bad advice on my behalf, as we got booted off the Scoot flight anyway and SQ cancelled our ticket (refunded within 4 days of agreeing to cancel ticket). ]

Both SQ and Scoot say Singapore will only allow transit if the two segments (LHR-SIN and SIN-SYD) are on a single booking. Scoot can't do that but SQ said if we make a Scoot booking and give them the reference then they can request internally to have an LHR-SIN SQ segment merged in. Given Scoot tickets are non-refundable, I was pretty nervous spending over 6k AUD on the two SIN-SYD tickets with Scoot based solely on a promise to *ask* about merging.

Eventually the SQ said he was willing to pre-request the merge. An hour or so later I had an SQ reservation for LHR-SIN which the agent said had a note on it that it was approved to have a Scoot SIN-SYD merged in. I couldn't see that note and based on the conversation wasn't 100% confident it was there or would work even if it was. It did seem 90% likely to work though. Still.... 6k+ AUD could be wasted if it couldn't be.

On the phone Scoot said they could consider a refund request on a case by case basis. I then got stuck in a surreal conversation with them on twitter DM which I can forward if you want to see it (it's long). I was asking them to seek pre-approval of a refund if SQ and Scoot failed to give me a single booking, with whatever restrictions they felt appropriate (e.g. booking 15+ days in advance, refund requested within 1 day of booking AND only if SQ tried and failed to do the merge). What I got was cycles of "Be assured we want to help", "You can ask for a refund if the merge fails and we'll consider it case by case", "You need a single booking to fly", "Our tickets are non-refundable".

By this stage I understood via @madrooster that given my nephew and his fiance are doctors (and for good measure they have covid ward experience, are fully vaccinated, and had covid twice: original in March 2020 and delta last month -- yay for high exposure), they can easily get a (quarantine) cap exemption to come in and work at a NSW hospital. More importantly, with a cap exemption he can ticket them on SQ or QR even though flights are showing unavailable.

 

[shankvijay]

Thanks FF Team. Got my Business travel exemption but due to reduction in flights and return travellers, my return flight got moved from Sydney to Adelaide. Need to quarantine in Adelaide and then travel to Sydney. Hope flights are available

 

[Pushka]

Thanks FF Team. Got my Business travel exemption but due to reduction in flights and return travellers, my return flight got moved from Sydney to Adelaide. Need to quarantine in Adelaide and then travel to Sydney. Hope flights are available

You will be fine. From SA you are free to travel anywhere. It's the getting back to SA that's the trick but that won't be your issue.

 

[dajop]

Both SQ and Scoot say Singapore will only allow transit if the two segments (LHR-SIN and SIN-SYD) are on a single booking. Scoot can't do that but SQ said if we make a Scoot booking and give them the reference then they can request internally to have an LHR-SIN SQ segment merged in. Given Scoot tickets are non-refundable, I was pretty nervous spending over 6k AUD on the two SIN-SYD tickets with Scoot based solely on a promise to *ask* about merging.

Thanks for the explanation.

didn't quite understand why SQ couldn't point you to book their codeshare on service operated by Scoot in conjunction with SQ flight (they can't book a single sector codeshare though). At one point (wanting to protect ourselves against non refundable Scoot fare) we were looking at a throw away SQ sector ... first sector SIN-PER (SQ code on Scoot operated flight), second sector KUL-SIN (SQ operated), which was bookable. But then we booked SIN-PER(SQ code, TR operated)/MEL-SIN (SQ operated) ... which got cancelled (!).

But. then I looked at it now, it seems this approach works with economy sectors, but when ScootPlus is the only cabin available, although SQ premium economy codes are available on such Scoot services, they didn't seem bookable at all, even in conjunction with SQ premium economy flights (eg LHR-SIN on SQ, SIN-PER on SQ code on TR). Makes life difficult.

 

[Revenge]

Got my Business travel exemption but due to reduction in flights and return travellers, my return flight got moved from Sydney to Adelaide. Need to quarantine in Adelaide and then travel to Sydney.

That's good! If you are lucky you will get to home quarantine as a part of the SA trial! (if you have somewhere suitable to stay in SA)

 

[Pushka]

That's good! If you are lucky you will get to home quarantine as a part of the SA trial! (if you have somewhere suitable to stay in SA)

At this stage it's limited to SA residents so they go to their home. That will change.

 

[shankvijay]

Yes. Its only for SA Residents.

 

[somebol]

I am trying to help a friend get back to Australia from India. google flights shows zero results from any where into Australia for the whole month of October.

Looking at NZ there seems to be some availability.

Now is it possible to book QR to AKL and connect to a separate AKL - OOL flight? Will that be allowed?
Also if he books the below QR route and is travelling HLO, can he just enter HQ in BNE?

Appreciate any thoughts.

 

[mviy]

To fly into NZ you need to have NZ citizenship or be a permanent resident of NZ and to have booked your quarantine place there. So it’s not an option for most wanting to come to Australia.