Australia: No more commercial airline seats home before Christmas

Frustrated travel industry representatives have warned there are no more commercial plane seats home for Australians abroad before Christmas, declaring the crisis caused by locking Australians out of the country as the worst it’s ever been. Airlines, including Singapore Airlines, recently cut a swath of commercial flights to Australia because of the reduction in the caps on the number of Australians allowed home per week via the hotel quarantine system. State premiers have allocated just over 300 hotel quarantine spaces a day for returning citizens. Airlines responded to the latest cuts by converting passenger flights into freight-only and bumping off all passengers, giving many no indication of when their tickets will be revalidated. Singapore Airlines is not taking bookings for flights into Australia until March next year. Jennie Bardsley, a travel agent of 29 years from Perth who specialises in helping Australians struggling to find a way home, often for a death or illness in the family, said the crisis had now reached its worst point since the government shut the borders 18 months ago to stop the spread of COVID-19. “This is the worst that it has ever, ever been,” she said. “We are absolutely helpless at this moment in time and we’ve never been helpless; we’ve been the guardian angels helping people travel, but now we can’t do anything.” Bardsley stopped taking bookings at the beginning of September and her waiting list has already blown out to “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds”. While online searches show some tickets available, they are on what the industry calls “ghost flights”, where airlines accept bookings despite there not being scheduled flights, leading to more last-minute bumpings.<br/>