Trying to help a friend (US citizen) trying to get back to the US from Fiji. Real problem is that almost all flights with any available seats are to Australia and New Zealand, which would be fine normally. But both are now blocking any non-citizens from entering, even if just in transit.

Found a single seat on a flight on Monday March 23 to SIN, but it got taken in the time the friend was trying to book.

Any other ideas? Getting to any airport in the US would be fine at this point, but even the flights just to HNL are fully booked.

Heads up for people who have long term visas in Singapore - work, student, DP, LTVP visas :

if you didn�t come to Singapore before 14 days SAH order was expanded to cover whole world, you will have serious problems return to Singapore in forcible future. Make plans for the case that you will stay where you are right now for next several months.

What is the situation like there in Fiji? If it isn't bad and there's no pressing reason to get back, I would just tell them to hunker down as it may be best.

That's probably what I would do, but bear in mind that there may be issues with access to healthcare or insurance.

There are situational exceptions available to the ban on non-citizens/residents transiting NZ; if it is really their only option then they may be able to get one. Contact Immigration New Zealand [1]. Australia may have similar arrangements but as with all immigration-related things they're likely to be less flexible/humane than NZ.

[1] https://www.immigration.govt.nz/abou...e-inz-response

Is anybody stranded in Serbia?
Not me, friend.
Has more cash, cards (ATM and credit), phones (three) and data SIMs (told him to go out and buy some) for a month.
Told him to get two weeks food too before supermarket gets cleaned out, even tho he's still enjoying local restaurants.

Waiting for either border opening, HKSAR evacuation, PRC evacuation if he's allowed on that or UK evacuation (possibly, if his family can find his expired UK docs...)

Fiji air still flies to Singapore, and United and SQ from here. That's one option.

My business partner couldn't make it out to Singapore due to Chinese passport, so having her ride this one out in Hawaii. She's setup in an airbnb with supplies in case she needs anything. I think Hawaii will be better off than continental US, especially for those not on Oahu. (She's in Maui)

I�ve read elsewhere that the locals aren�t so keen on people coming to Hawaii to ride it out. Apparently there were some incidents in Maui.

Of course they're not keen. Nobody's keen on having anyone come to their community from outside right now. Xenophobia is shooting up through the roof everywhere.

I am definitely getting seriously strange looks driving my LHD Austrian registered car in the UK at the moment.

I think there's a lot of that. I was on a tour in Bolivia that got cut short and our options for getting home (4 of us, all US citizens) dwindled as country after country closed its borders, even to transiting passengers. Bolivia had something like 20 COVID-19 cases as of yesterday so it's not exactly a hotbed of infection. The tour company booked us on the only flight (that I'm aware of) directly from Bolivia to the US- Boliviana Airlines from Santa Cruz to Miami. That was this past Wednesday; Bolivia has now closed its borders and the last flight to Miami was Thursday.

When I think about it, passengers from elsewhere are a "hot potato" that no country wants. Many are on limited budgets and can't afford to be quarantined. Some will get sick and may be a drain on already-stretched country resources, not to mention an addition to the ever-important count of cases. A few airports had considered "sequestering" transiting passengers but that carried its own risks of disease transmission and sheer logistics,

No easy answers.

We are in a lounge in Delhi with boarding passes in hand for DEL-SIN and SIN-BNE.

Uzbek Air tagged our luggage all the way through to BNE, but apparently only one bag made it to DEL. We were advised to file a claim with SIngapore Air when when we get to BNE and they�ll eventually get the other two bags to us, but I won�t be holding my breath.

All the warnings about DEL not allowing transit were unfounded, there were a bunch of people transiting. We did have to wait five hours at the transit desk for our boarding passes. We got a prime view of a couple of near riots by the mass of Indian citizens returning ahead of the shutdown all jammed together waiting to get to immigration (so much for social distancing).

the next hurdle was when my wife�s ETA didn�t work (understandably), but when the agent called Australian Immigration and sent them a copy of our marriage certificate they overruled the rejection and we are good to go.

On the flight from TAS all the flight crew were in head to toe HazMat gear. It was pretty surreal. I think I�m actually looking forward to our 14 day quarantine, it�s going to take me that long to recover from this journey.

I don't see the point of an exit restriction. Especially for travellers who can prove all they're doing is to go home.

We in Hong Kong has a relative open door approach to airside transit too. IANAE but I really cannot figure out, and from my home port cannot see, the point of restricting airside transit either.

In January and February it was Hubeiese outside the province who were the lepers of the world. Now it's just travellers generally.

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If a country feels moved to close borders, it still has to figure out what to do with travellers.

China totally failed on that count - Hubeiese outside the province can't get back in, and were treated as lepers by the rest of the country (their own country). Some were living in abandoned malls and underground passageways. Local governments pretended to care but were quickly shown to be insincere.

I think these will come back to haunt them. Some of us will remember what Bolivia/Peru/Morocco/Argentina/Serbia did and plan very conservative trips into the country once the current pandemic has subsided.
But I think it'll be a big step back for the globalisation, when we see how beastly we can be to those not from our own country/city/district during a crisis, be it in terms of tourism or longer-term movement of population.

Good luck to your partner. Maui is a great place to visit. There are very limited medical care options on Maui, so hopefully she stays healthy.

The one incident I read about was on Molokai, which is part of Maui County. https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/0...itors-go-home/

Of course, there is a well-established group of anti-development folks on Molokai who protest anything that would bring in employment. They have been known to burn construction equipment. But, that is OT.

Thanks- I had found one seat to Singapore yesterday, then it went away as she was starting to book.

Turns out Fiji added a flight on Monday to LAX and she got a ticket. Likely be one of the last flights out for a while.