How travellers are beating restrictions
PASSENGERS HAVE TO BE CREATIVE TO GET ON A PLANE AMID VARIOUS CURBS
Unable to get tickets, some are attempting to organise private chartered flights, while travel agents say they’re having to bribe airlines for limited seats.
Travel curbs and border restrictions are upending lives around the globe, with some people resorting to chartering planes on their own or paying many times the regular ticket price to get back to their jobs and homes.
Eight months into the pandemic, the push to normalise is seeing some try to travel internationally again, whether for a long-delayed but essential business trip or to return to where they live. Yet airlines are only reluctantly adding flights to their bare-bones schedules, and virus resurgences have some countries imposing new travel rules. The number of international flights to the US, Australia and Japan has fallen more than 80 per cent from a year ago, while flights to China are down by more than 94 per cent, according to aviation industry database Cirium.
Support groups
Travellers have to be creative just to get on a plane. Support groups have sprung up on Facebook and WeChat for those who have been stuck thousands of miles from their jobs, homes and families. Unable to get tickets, some are attempting to organise private chartered flights, while travel agents say they’re having to bribe airlines for limited seats. Others are shelling out for business or first-class tickets, only to be turned away for lack of the right documentation.
“So many people with families are separated, it’s so heartbreaking,” said Ariel Lee, a mother in Shanghai who administers a few WeChat groups of 1,650 members in total trying to get into China.