Predictions of when international flights may resume/bans lifted

I’m fine with that as long as returned travellers are monitored to ensure no visitors. Also penalties for breaking isolation need to be far greater

Couple that with testing on arrival and risk profiling based on country(s) that those arriving had been in during the previous 14 days, you could let a proportion of arrivals to self isolate at home with fairly low risk.
 
I’m fine with that as long as returned travellers are monitored to ensure no visitors.

Which if people are in their own homes would be probably more expensive than quarantine at a facility.

Now yes I do understand that a fortunate few like Danii Minogue have been allowed to to do it, but I find it difficult to imagine that you would not soon have rampant community transmission occurring if we open up international borders and we had thousands of incoming travellers per month, if not per week, coming in and just going home to quarantine.

Now like probably everyone on this forum I would love easy international travel including quarantine, but at present I just do not see how that is possible. The countries overseas that have reactivated international travel to not seem to have gone that well.

Even Greece which had gone exceptionally well has struggled with reactivating tourism.
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For reference this is what benevolent dictatorships do for returning travellers from low risk destinations:

6. Amongst these low-risk countries, we will start by lifting our current border restrictions to allow the entry of visitors from Brunei Darussalam and New Zealand into Singapore. Travellers entering Singapore and who have remained in either Brunei Darussalam or New Zealand in the last consecutive 14 days prior to their entry [2] will not be required to serve a SHN. Instead, they will undergo a COVID-19 test upon arrival at the airport and only be allowed to go about their activities in Singapore after receiving a negative test result.

....

Reduced SHN of 7 Days for Travellers from Low Risk Countries/Regions

9. There are other low risk countries/regions where an SHN may also not be needed. But out of abundance of caution we will keep the SHN for now. However, we will shorten the SHN duration from the current 14 days to 7 days, and allow travellers to serve the SHN at their place of residence[4]. These low risk countries/regions are Australia (excluding Victoria State), Macao, Mainland China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The COVID-19 test will continue to be administered before the end of the 7-day SHN.


(SHN = Stay at Home Notice)
 
Couple that with testing on arrival and risk profiling based on country(s) that those arriving had been in during the previous 14 days, you could let a proportion of arrivals to self isolate at home with fairly low risk.

Risk profiling would be difficult. The very wealthy Portsea couple had no compunction on putting themselves before community. Would they have been high risk, or low risk?

Testing on arrival would help. But people infected on the way home would not be detected by such a test as it would be too early. ie In quarantine at present they will often test at day 3 and da 10.

If we have thousands going through the process then cases would happen.

Personally without an effective vaccine I just cannot see how it could work.
 
Risk profiling would be difficult. The very wealthy Portsea couple had no compunction on putting themselves before community. Would they have been high risk, or low risk?

High risk . They were in the USA. Very simple. If they'd spent the previous 14 days in NZ. it would be low risk. Again very simple, test the NZ'ers and send them home. The default could be high risk, unless epidemiological information, results of previous testing of arrivals and trust in the processes employed in a particular country indicates a low risk. Remember, you could still ask people to isolate at home for 14 days.
 
High risk . They were in the USA. Very simple. If they'd spent the previous 14 days in NZ. it would be low risk. Again very simple, test the NZ'ers and send them home. The default could be high risk, unless epidemiological information, results of previous testing of arrivals and trust in the processes employed in a particular country indicates a low risk. Remember, you could still ask people to isolate at home for 14 days.


Ok, understand now. Risk is from where they are from. I assumed you meant something else by risk profile.

And yes I would see certain countries such as NZ or Taiwan as quite different. This would be a very small list!

However they would need to be direct flights and not through hub airports where mixing and transmission could occur.
 
Normally, I would have had 1-1.5 weeks off sometime mid year and be putting the final touches on a 5-7 week RTW trip now. With the pandemic and related border closures, that hasn't and won't happen.

As a result, I'm going to cross the "excessive leave" threshold of 8 weeks annual leave balance by Feb, at which point work will force me to take some.
The EBA allows work to require people with more then 8 weeks of annual leave to take it, with the staff member being allowed 8 weeks to sort out when to take that leave before work dictates when it will be taken.

I have no desire to take annual leave to stay at home, but even less desire to allow work to determine when I should take leave.

If I take 1 week leave now, that will push the excessive threshold back to late April/early May and allow until late June to have leave booked.

What are the chances of being able to have a reasonable overseas holiday booked in Q2 2021?
 
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Normally, I would have had 1-1.5 weeks off sometime mid year and be putting the final touches on a 5-7 week RTW trip now. With the pandemic and related border closures, that hasn't and won't happen.

As a result, I'm going to cross the "excessive leave" threshold of 8 weeks annual leave balance by Feb, at which point work will force me to take some.
The EBA allows work to require people with more then 8 weeks of annual leave to take it, with the staff member being allowed 8 weeks to sort out when to take that leave before work dictates when it will be taken.

I have no desire to take annual leave to stay at home, but even less desire to allow work to determine when I should take leave.

If I take 1 week leave now, that will push the excessive threshold back to late April/early May and allow until late June to have leave booked.

What are the chances of being able to have a reasonable overseas holiday booked in Q2 2021?
North Island or South Island? I prefer the South Island. I really can't see anywhere else either accepting us, or Australia letting us back.
Agree, NZ or say somewhere like Taiwan might be your best chance.

Perhaps take another week off Christmas to New Year period if that helps the deferment of forced leave.
 
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.... As a result, I'm going to cross the "excessive leave" threshold of 8 weeks annual leave balance by Feb, at which point work will force me to take some.
The EBA allows work to require people with more then 8 weeks of annual leave to take it, with the staff member being allowed 8 weeks to sort out when to take that leave before work dictates when it will be taken.

While I’m not personally in this situation having burned all my annual leave on trips in 2019 (good timing) a lot of people working to me watch the same problems especially those in Victoria they don’t what to take forced leave and stay within 5 kms of their home.

Staff in other states and just taken holidays locally so not as bad as situation but a few of them had been saving leave for an international trip which they now have to use for a local holiday.
 
More on the NZ bubble, I think the airlines would have a lot of issues with a 'one way' system.
Would have to be government subsidised.

---

TRANS-TASMAN BUBBLE TO LAUNCH ASAP, SAYS MINISTER


Plans to allow flights between Australia and New Zealand appear to have significantly ramped up after Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government is now “working at speed” to open the route.

Australia even revealed it would consider initially allowing one-way travel to get things moving quicker.

“We’re not requiring that New Zealand allows Australians back immediately, but they are working towards it. So we’d like to be able to allow friends, family, tourists to come to Australia,” Minister Hunt said.

The news comes after Australian Aviation reported similar comments yesterday by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham.

The acceleration in plans appears to coincide with both Victoria and Auckland regaining control of COVID-19 case numbers after a second spike of infections.

Hunt’s intervention marks the strongest comments so far that a deal between the two countries to allow quarantine-free travel could be close.

 

More talk of opening up borders

I note the wording travel ban 'may' be extended. 'May' sounds like a positive lol

If Bain/VA2 had kept their A330's they would have finally launched their Japan route :(

Maybe this will see QF flying into Seoul.... :cool: Personally I'd love to get back to Japan!
 

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