Flight cancellations continue, world hit by travel chaos

Boxing Day holiday-makers’ travel plans continue to be hit by flight cancellations, as positive tests wreak havoc at airports globally.

Members of the public are seen at the Sydney Domestic Airport in Sydney as Covid-19 forced two of Australia's major airlines to cancel dozens of flights, throwing Christmas plans into disarray. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

Travel plans for Boxing Day holiday-makers have continued to be hit by flight cancellations, but a sense of order has returned to airlines after major delays on Christmas Eve.

December 24 was thrown into disarray for thousands of travellers after 80 of 500 scheduled domestic flights across all airlines at Sydney Airport were cancelled on Friday, in addition to 52 flights in Melbourne. The forced adjustments were the result of a large number of frontline staff being forced to test and isolate, carrier Jetstar said.

But a spokeswoman for Jetstar said the network hadn’t faced any notable impacts on Sunday, with around six flights cancelled and all passengers accommodated onto other flights. Qantas hadn’t been hit by any cancellations, she said.

According to flight tracking website Flight Aware, Jetstar had cancelled a dozen flights across Australia, with a further 13 delayed. Virgin Australia had scrapped eight flights, with another dozen delayed.

Regional carrier QantasLink has cancelled nine flight.

The cancellations have exacerbated issues for Australian travellers trying to travel for the Christmas holidays. At a time when ballooning case numbers was forcing swathes of the population into isolation, requirements for PCR testing before travelling to Queensland and South Australia had intensified pressure on the states’ pathology systems, resulting in waiting times blowing out to 72-hours.

On Sunday, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard called on Queensland and South Australia to drop the requirement for PCR tests before travel, saying it is putting “enormous pressure” on the state’s Covid-19 pathology infrastructure and undermining the ability to undertake clinical testing.

With waiting times for PCR tests upwards of seven hours, Mr Hazzard paid tribute to the ability of the health system to process up to 160,000 tests per day, but said many of the tests had been “forced upon us” by states with strict travel requirements.

A health worker looks on at the Histopath pre-departure Covid-19 testing clinic at Sydney International airport. Picture: Getty

Instead, he asked Premiers to consider using rapid antigen testing, which he labelled a “far simpler, far quicker measure”. Mr Hazzard alluded to conversations between premiers about the testing requirements, imploring them to review the situation “as soon as possible”.

“In many cases, it is forced upon us by direction from Health, or because other states, South Australia, Queensland, and so on, are insisting on PCR tests for travel,” Mr Hazzard told reporters on Sunday morning.

“Number one – as Health Minister, I certainly send again the message to those states that getting PCR tests is putting an enormous pressure on our pathology system and minimising the capacity for proper clinical PCR tests.”

While major Australian carriers said the situation had been resolved by Christmas Day, the problem of frontline staff being ordered to test and isolate is one facing airlines globally, with the highly transmissible Omicron strain adding an unexpected strain to the holiday season.

With more than 170,000 people testing positive daily, airlines in the US cancelled more than 600 flights on Friday, with hundreds more on Christmas Day scrapped as well, the Wall Street Journal reported, the consequence of the isolation requirements for people who tested positive.

In response, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced critical workers in education, healthcare, transportation and other sectors would be allowed to return to work after five days, if they were fully vaccinated, were no longer showing symptoms, or their symptoms were resolving and they had been without a fever for 72-hours.

The move follows the UK government, who reduced its recommended self-isolation period to seven days for vaccinated people.