Airlines have been warned against profiteering from desperate, stranded Australians trying to get home before passenger arrival caps are halved in 11 days time, amid warnings that some carriers could stop passenger flights to Australia altogether.
Ticket prices for London to Sydney flights over the next fortnight bounced erratically on Saturday, at times as high as $38,000, the day after Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a reduction to just 3000 inbound passengers a week in response to the risks posed by the Delta strain of COVID-19.
A search for a one-way flight from London to Sydney on midday Saturday.Credit:Google Flights
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt warned airlines against price gouging in the wake of the new passenger limits. “I hope there is nobody who seeks a commercial advantage from difficult circumstances and that’s a strong, clear message,” he said on Saturday.
Cutting the cap on commercial arrivals by half will exacerbate the difficulty 34,000 stranded Australians already face in returning home.
The availability of commercial flights is very low and prices are unaffordable for many. And with planes designed to carry 350 or more flying vast distances with as few as 25 paying passengers on board, many airlines are weighing up whether they continue their flights to Australia.
Online searches for flights into Melbourne and Sydney from the US and Britain showed airlines were advertising one-way tickets for tens of thousands of dollars in some cases.
Price search results conducted midday Saturday for LA to Melbourne flights.Credit:Google Flights
Travellers wanting to get from London to Sydney before July 14, when the travel caps will be halved, will have to pay anywhere from $1500 to almost $38,000 (on July 13) for flights with multiple layovers.
Thousands of Australian citizens and permanent residents who have tickets booked after July 14 are anxiously waiting to hear if they will be bumped off their flights.
Some, such as young couple Dylan and Emilio Polanco, could be left homeless and jobless if they lose their ticket.
Ms Polanco is 17 weeks pregnant and was due to fly home to Australia with her husband in early August by which time she will be 22 weeks pregnant.
Australian citizens Emilio (left) and Dylan Polanco fear being stranded without insurance or jobs with a new baby if they lose their flight home.
The couple moved to the US six years ago to work but had always planned to return to Melbourne, where their immediate families live, when they had children. The couple had started planning their shift back in early 2020 but the pandemic waylaid their plans.
They waited until this year when prices had dropped and they were both vaccinated to finally come home, putting in their notice with work and organising an end to the lease on their apartment both timed with their scheduled flight in August.
Ms Polanco said Friday’s announcement was devastating, and the couple were waiting to hear from United Airlines on whether they could still get home before the 28th week of her pregnancy when it will no longer be safe for her to fly.
“Because we’re on such a time limit and we’re more than likely going to get cancelled ... I might have to have the baby here,” she said.
“We’ll be unemployed and without [health] insurance, because we’ve timed everything to finish up our life here.“
The couple has registered with DFAT and plan to pack their house up in the coming days and live out of a suitcase in the event a spot on a repatriation flight comes up at short notice.
The Board of Airline Representatives of Australia, which represents 33 major international carriers, said it was hypocritical of the government to suggest airlines may be taking advantage of customers when it was still charging a fixed air navigation fee of about $7000 a flight into the country no matter how few passengers were on board.
The board has approached the government to waive these fees but was dismissed.
“Ultimately most airlines are actually bleeding cashflow losses – this is not about trying to make a profit, it’s just about recovering your direct operating costs of running the services,” said the board’s executive director Barry Abrams.
Airlines were waiting for the Department of Infrastructure to allocate the new flight quotas early next week before they could tell passengers if their tickets were still valid, Mr Abrams said.
He said it may not be as simple as halving the passenger number for each flight after July 14. A few people may be bumped off some flights, while other flights won’t go ahead at all.
“If you’re doing a flight every day, you might be allocated 25 passengers for five of those flights and then you might get allocated zero passengers for two flights,” said Mr Abrams said.
He said each airline had a different method of deciding who gets to keep their ticket; some will go with those who booked first, others will choose the passenger who paid the highest fares and some will prioritise frequent flyers or hardship circumstances.
A group of about 30 airlines only operate one or two flights into Australia every week, and Mr Abrams said many of these less common airlines would be weighing up whether it was financially feasible to keep operating passenger flights at all under the new rules.
“Do they default to just operating freight flights? Because it’s very difficult to justify the costs of crew and catering and everything else that comes with 25 passengers coming in on an aircraft designed for up to 350.
“We’re clearly going to be reducing the connectivity available for people to get back to Australia.”
Flights booked up until July 14 will go ahead as scheduled and flights that are part of the trans-Tasman bubble will not be included in the new cap rules, according to Mr Abrams.
Mr Hunt said an increase in government-facilitated repatriation flights could help fill the gap left by the decrease in commercial flight arrivals in the coming months.
“We know that some of those flights have in fact been under-subscribed in recent weeks so there is that capacity to bring additional Australians home via Howard Springs,” he said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is working through the priority locations for repatriation flights to be facilitated.
With Fergus Hunter
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Rachael Dexter is a breaking news reporter at The Age.
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2021-07-03 09:14:01Z
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