docbert

They have announced a plan to do that, but as yet nothing is official. The states will still need to sign off on it (keep in mind that NSW, the only state that UA currently fly into, is without either a Premier or Deputy Premier at the moment!). It's also pending a successful trial of their quarantine-at-home program, and even then the actual start date hasn't been confirmed.

Airlines, including UA, have been impacted in the past when the government changed quotas without notice, causing the them to cancel hundreds of bookings (and in many cases, entire flights), so it's not surprising they aren't opening booking at this stage until there's some more clarity around numbers/start dates/additional conditions/etc.

Aussienarelle

Australia changed it such that permission to leave now needs to be requested. It changed from you could leave if you could prove residency elsewhere. Do not understand why they changed the rule but until it changes again it makes me nervous to travel to Australia.

Agree it would be good to see UA have more seats but I have given up on this Christmas. Don't blame UA. I would be nervous about planning for additional seats/pax flights to Australia when other countries are providing certainty.

Edit: If you enter Australia with your Australian passport you need to use the same passport to leave. Alwsts a hassle with my child who is dual citizen like you.

seanp7

Thanks - I figured as much.

docbert

They changed it, but it fundamentally doesn't make any difference. If you are a foreign resident, your request to leave will be approved - it just means you need to fill in a web form first.

I suspect the trigger for the change was to simplify the process at the airport. I departed Australia a month or two before they bought this change into effect, and at the check-in the agent had to go through a manual process of calling someone in immigration to get approval to check me in given that I hadn't followed the standard pre-approval process (which wasn't required for non-residents at the time). Having a single process for all Australian citizens makes sense.

Mwenenzi

People are being to optimistic and hoping for too much
From another thread

phkc070408

Yes - and yes it's a limited number of people - but it's still more people than there are now. Also, with QF coming back into the game, a huge supply increase for a limited number of AU passengers. UA needs to make themselves available to ANY AU travelers that they can if they want to stay in the AU game.

WineCountryUA

Are the daily airport quotas still in place?

HNLbasedFlyer

On the local news this morning in Honolulu - multiple stories about Australians being able to internationally travel later this year and its expected economic impact to Hawaii. On the other hand - they also stated Americans won't be able to go to Australia - anytime soon - sometime in 2022 at the earliest.

supine

The next phase is actually restoring them to the previous levels from before the most recent reduction.

They can't actually go away completely because hotel quarantine places will still need to be rationed.

Somehow they need to figure out how to cap those seats while allowing fully vaccinated folk to have no cap. Not sure how they get that to work.

Perhaps they need to switch to an NZ style system where you book your HQ place first, then book a flight. Then it's no longer on the airline to ration seats, people either are vaccinated or have a HQ slot before they book a ticket.

Mwenenzi

Seems to be comments from people who are *not* in Australia. Do not believe all you read in click bait headlines

The NZ MIQ is far better than the AU system, where airlines effectively auction the AU state (VIC, NSW, QLD etc) run quarantine hotels. Problem with both AU & NZ is quarantine demand is a magnitude more than availability.. AU govt is building new dedicated quarantine facilities: they will be used.
--->Australia’s response to Covid-19 [general border control thread]

docbert

I know they started keeping track of vaccination status of arriving passengers some time back - it would be good to see the numbers from that. My suspicion is that 95+% of all arrivals (or at least, those above 12 or 16) are already vaccinated. If only 5% of arriving passengers need hotel quarantine then there may be no need to ration then. Certainly when I flew to Australia in April, 100% of the passengers I spoke to claimed to be vaccinated.

Of course, there's also potentially vaccinated people that will need (possibly shorter) hotel quarantine due to lack of anywhere else to quarantine. Hard to judge what the numbers there would be.

supine

I'm not sure those statistics are all that meaningful given how constrained the caps were and the selection criteria was mostly "could afford an absurdly priced ticket and didn't get bumped". That would make me think extrapolating the numbers would be too optimistic.

They are also a bit meaningless on the pessimistic side because there is probably a huge pool of folk like myself that are vaccinated but can't justify 2 weeks of HQ, but once home quarantine / no quarantine is a thing will be lining up to get on a plane.

Right, so a NZ style system becomes necessary because you can't make the airlines control for the nuances of what individual passengers will need. The current system works when 1 passenger =~ 1 HQ room but the future won't be that simple.

phkc070408

My original post isn't about the current situation, it's about what is expected in Mid-November, when 80% of the 16+ population are fully vaxed.

CNN.com

AU Covid Live

supine

Sure, I'd love some clarity on how Phase C will work and when it will be introduced. I'm sure the airlines would too.

I was just pointing out that we haven't even seen Phase B be implemented yet.

TomMM

In another thread it was mentioned that Hawaii is only allowing persons vaccinated in the US to enter. Is this correct?