Bust out your passports because Qantas has reopened ticket sales across its international networks from July 1, single-handedly keeping travel spirits alive across Australia.
In the hope that the COVID-19 vaccination, rolling out in March 2021, will restart international travel, Qantas has pulled forward its flights to London and Los Angeles from October to July 1, with both countries currently administering its coronavirus vaccine.
However, for those hoping for a trip to Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan come March, said flights have been pushed back to July 1 as travel bubbles with those countries are considered highly unlikely until then.
“We continue to review and update our international schedule in response to the developing COVID-19 situation,” the airline revealed in a statement.
“Recently we have aligned the selling of our international services to reflect our expectation that international travel will begin to restart from July 2021.”
Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas, has previously revealed that a ‘no jab, no fly’ rule will become mandatory for quarantine-free travel, which means that a vaccine will be needed to leave the country.
“We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say, for international travellers, that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft,” Joyce told A Current Affair in November.
“Whether you need that domestically, we will have to see what happens with COVID-19 in the market, but certainly, for international visitors coming out [to Australia] and people leaving the country, we think that is a necessity.”
On the downside, London and Los Angeles may be two of the least popular travel destinations in 2021 with the U.K. and the U.S. experiencing a significant surge in coronavirus cases, with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson having recently announced a nation-wide lockdown until mid-February at the bare minimum.
But the silver lining is that both countries have been fast-tracked to receive the highly-coveted vaccine, with the U.K. handing out both the Oxford-AstraZeneca and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, and the US is currently rolling out the Pfizer version.
And while Australia looks to be on track to receive the vaccine in March, the Australian Government has stressed that we wait and see what happens in those countries while we currently have the outbreak under control.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has also spoken out against Qantas’ plans to resume selling tickets on international flights.
McCormack, who is also Minister for Transport, announced that the Australian Government, not Qantas, would decide when international travel would resume, once it was no longer posed as a risk to public health.
“Decisions about when international travel resumes will be made by the Australian Government,” he said. “International borders will be opened when international arrivals do not pose a risk to Australians.”
McCormack also announced that “the Australian Government is working on travel arrangements with countries, such as New Zealand, that have low community infections.”
In the meantime, there’s nothing quite like planning some interstate adventures to keep us entertained while we wait.
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