Padma, Joseph and I have something in common with 19,000 … or 100,000 depending on who is counting … Aussies.
We can’t get home.
Yet there are plenty of airlines eager to fly us to Australia and no shortage of hotels who will quarantine us and who are desperate to fill empty rooms. In July, the Australian Government capped the number of incoming passengers to 4,000 a week. Out of that pool, Western Australia can receive 575 a week and the airline we booked on, Qatar Airlines, can only take 30 passengers per plane. So it’s no wonder that those 30 pax have paid huge fees to fly on business or first class.
We were booked to fly home on 11 September. Last Friday we got an email telling us we have been bumped. I called Qatar to rebook. At the moment the Government cap is in force till 24 October so Qatar is only allowing booking after that date as they are full till then with premium paying passengers. We managed to get a flight on 1 November. If I were willing to shell out megabucks I might have got on a business class seat and got home a week earlier. If the cap isn’t lifted, I’d be fairly confident we’ll be bumped on 1 November as well.
When and if passengers return to Australia they are escorted at the airport to a government-selected hotel and forced to quarantine for two weeks without ever leaving the room. That’s two weeks of not being able to open a window and eating out of Styrofoam takeaway containers left at the door. For that privilege we will pay about AUD2400 per person.
The airlines say they have 100,000 passengers who are booked to travel to Australia. With the current caps many of those passengers will have to wait till 2021 to get home. Many are desperate and without money, visas, and jobs. Many are living in hotels and have children crawling the walls. Most are like us … we finished our overseas contracts and now just want to go home. We’ve booked flights and are willing to do hotel quarantine and pay for it. We just want the Government to let us come home.
For our Aussie friends, please help us out and sign the below petition. If you’re not convinced, Google ‘stranded Aussies’ and you’ll read about countless Aussies who have been waiting months and have been bumped endlessly and just can’t get home.
We thought the right to return home to the land of our citizenship was an inalienable right. We were wrong.