More repat flights put on
TWENTY extra repatriation flights will be deployed by the federal government to help Australians stranded overseas, with travellers to be sent to Darwin and two other jurisdictions.
Acting Foreign Minister Simon Birmingham, in a press conference yesterday, announced the government would be scheduling 20 extra flights from “priority areas” around the world, all due to arrive by the end of March.
TWENTY extra repatriation flights will be deployed by the federal government to help Australians stranded overseas, with travellers to be sent to Darwin and two other jurisdictions.
Acting Foreign Minister Simon Birmingham, in a press conference on Saturday, announced the government would be scheduling 20 extra flights from “priority areas” around the world. The extra flights are due to arrive from the end of January and into March.
This follows the national cabinet’s decision to reduce the cap on international arrivals via commercial flights by about 50 per cent until midFebruary, and the announcement by international airline Emirates that it would be suspending all flights to and from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
“So we’ll create additional places for Australians to get home, over and above those caps, by transporting people into Howard Springs in the Northern Territory, Canberra or Tasmania, locations that are willing to work above those caps on a case-by-case basis,” Mr Birmingham said.
“These flights will fly from priority areas from around the world, making sure that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, off of their intelligence and knowledge of where Australians most need assistance, target those flights,” he said.
There are still about 37,000 Australians overseas who want to come home, according to DFAT.
Under a bilateral agreement between the NT government and the commonwealth, Darwin’s Howard Springs quarantine facility, known as the Centre for National Resilience, is to build its capacity from 500 to 850 people per fortnight. The capacity of Howard Springs is set to increase through a “staged ramp-up over January 2021 and May 2021”, according to government documents.
The agreement allows for the renegotiation of the NT’s quarantine intake cap.
The federal government will negotiate with the ACT and Tasmania on how many international arrivals they will be able to manage.