80 Sydney flights cancelled due to test wait times and isolation

Thousands of Australians face the prospect of being unable to board flights home for Christmas as wait times for COVID tests balloon out. The Northern Territory, Queensland and Tasmania are still asking passengers from ‘high risk’ areas to test negative via a PCR test 72 hours before departure, alongside many other international countries. However, a surge in Omicron cases has caused long queues and results to take days to process. The testing chaos has also caused aviation staff to be forced to isolate, leading to flights being cancelled or delayed. On Thursday, 80 services departing and arriving in Sydney had already been cancelled. A Jetstar spokesman said, “Unfortunately like many people in Sydney and Melbourne, a large number of our frontline team are being required to test and isolate as close contacts given the increasing number of cases in the general community, and as a result, we have had to make some late adjustments to our schedule. We appreciate the frustration this causes, especially as customers are travelling for Christmas, and sincerely apologise for the impact these changes are having on travel plans. We are working to minimise any delays and re-accommodating passengers on flights as close as possible to their original departure times across both Jetstar and Qantas services.” Virgin said while it was operating hundreds of services today with little to no impact, it apologised for any passengers affected by changes.<br/>