Travel & Holidays

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Hard ask. It’s probably safe to let them into the bubble because of their low case numbers, but the journey to Greece from Australia usually requires a transit stop in one of the COVID hotspots.

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They can keep you in a transit lounge in some of those airports. I have flown to Europe before and had to leave the plane for an hour but could not wander around the airport. They kept us all in the lounge until we could board the plane again.

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I think another trip to Mykonos is on the cards. But for some reason I don’t think Australia is going to go for it at the moment.

I noticed a passenger jet take off from Brisbane airport late this morning and thought it was a rare sight as most flights seemed to look like Fedex planes. But then another took off within minutes. Flight radar said one of Virgin to LA and the other Jetstar to Cairns. Looking at the departure list on the airport website showed there were quite a few other flights during the day. I was a bit surprised at the number, despite being aware that some international carriers have started up again primarily as freight carriers.

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It really would be good and I feel like I really need a holiday right now. But I’m reluctant to travel anywhere overseas this year.

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I’ll be waiting for things to settle down a bit before going on any recreational travel. But when I do it’ll be somewhere in Australia, probably (well OK, almost certainly) in New South Wales.

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This is exactly what most of them are doing. A large majority of both domestic and international air freight arrives is transported via passenger jet in Australia.
The examples you provided are services that are underwritten by the federal government, however.

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I have just started 3 weeks holiday and will be doing an extended road trip, most likely western/southern NSW and the top end of Victoria. Don’t know exactly where yet.

Will set out probably Thurs/Fri, so be prepared for reports of motel rooms with incorrect LCN settings on the telly, radio stations that are / are not on air (or are blank carriers), and other interesting Media Spy tidbits!

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Sounds like fun. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah it will be the same here. When Victoria eases their travel restrictions, regionally, I will probably make my way back to Melbourne from Adelaide for work. On the way I will probably stop off at the Grampians for a weekend getaway.

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i think that can be done tomorrow

That is good. I am still going to wait until overnight stays are ok, restaurants are operating better and I can go back for work. Its a bit pointless being in Victoria at the moment.

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overnight stays are ok as of torromorrow

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Bit far to go for an overnight stay haha I will be using it as a stopover back to Melbourne :slight_smile:

Regarding the flight path/stopovers to Greece. Could they not setup direct routes from Australia to Greece temporarily? They already do London to Perth. Isn’t Greece much closer?

Easier said than done - has to pass government approval processes, they have to arrange for cabin / passenger services at an airport they don’t service, even at a time when limited flights are running it can’t happen overnight.

And on top of this it’s not an ongoing viable route, so they’d only be running it while the travel bubble exists.

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But would it be worth it for Australia temporarily? To create a travel bubble in a few months with Greece would assist with tourism and jobs?

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I wonder what impact Brexit will have on airlines and if changing to an EU hub might become preferable over Heathrow (although I’d imagined somewhere more central, like Frankfurt rather than Athens).

Agreed, but it’d likely be put into the too hard basket by the airlines (both in Australia and Greece) to work out something that may only operate for a few months. The revenue coming in for a temporary service might not be enough to justify the effort to set it up.

The vast majority of traffic utilizing direct flights to the UK from Australia doesn’t tend to connect to EU destinations there-on.

I think we’ll see a bit of a change to frequencies and destinations when it comes to Trans-Atlantic flights from the US and Canada - especially as transatlantic services to smaller cities in the US are very UK-heavy.

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