Coronavirus: ‘Grab a couch’, the only help offered to stranded Aussies

The Australian High Commission in Britain is so inundated with calls from stranded citizens it can only suggest they join the local homeless at shelters.

Sammy Wood is facing homelessness in Britain in two weeks after being bumped off a flight returning to Australia. Picture: Annabel Moeller

Sammy Wood is 27 weeks pregnant and should be most excited about the impending birth of her first born, a boy.

Instead she has been anxiously alternating between tears and phone calls, racking up more than $500 in phone bills to a Qatar Airlines call centre in the Middle East since a 10.39pm email dropped into her inbox last Thursday.

Wood and her partner, Andy, have been two of the thousands of Australians bumped off flights ­as they have tried to get back home ever since the imposition of strict caps on the numbers of arrivals into Australian cities. Australian officials have suggested the couple should “couch surf” when they become homeless in less than a fortnight.

“Look at me,” said Wood. “I can barely roll off a couch. Who wants a pregnant woman or a family with a newborn in their lounge room?”

The airlines are now working through all their bookings until the end of October, culling all but about 30 passengers a flight to avoid bumping people off at the last minute.

The Australian High Commission in Britain has sent staff to Heathrow to help passengers turned away at the last moment, but this help is mainly restricted to providing lists of local homeless shelters that may be able to provide short-term emergency housing.

Wood and her partner learned their seats on the London to Sydney via Doha flight on September 30 had been abruptly cancelled after the airline told them the ­entire flight had been cancelled — something Wood, a former travel agent and most recently a Royal Mail postal worker, knows not to be true. Like other economy class passengers, she was cast aside in preference for business class passengers.

“We had been planning to go back for a year, but had our lease to uphold until now. I was an ­essential worker, and we had to organise Andy’s exemption,” she said, upset that more than 20,000 expats were trying to get home.

Still, Wood was still blindsided by Qatar Airlines’ decision. She had been repeatedly assured by airline officials that her booking was secure; that she was regarded as a medical case because she needed to fly before a 35-week pregnancy cut-off date. She supplied verified medical documents and a letter from her doctor confirming her pregnancy and that she should return to Australia for her well being.

Wood not only emailed the airline all of this information, she followed up with several phone calls to make sure it was recorded. She has had to phone the airline in Doha as the London office doesn’t answer the phone.

“They told me I had a medical priority and actually told me twice to stop stressing about it, but then I got the email and when Andy rang them they confirmed to him that they knew I was pregnant but we had still been bumped off and their response was ‘tough’,” she said.

Wood’s lease expires in less than a fortnight. She has finished her job, and Andy, a film industry worker, has been unemployed for months.

The airline has offered the couple a new date — in January — weeks after her baby is due, which brings with it added complications about registering the baby’s birth, securing a new passport and then obtaining an exemption for him to be allowed to enter Australia. All the while they will be eating into their small savings and unable to afford new plane tickets.

The Australian High Commission is inundated with similar tales of desperation, so much so all it can offer is to direct bumped Australians to join the local homeless at shelters. One high commission official told Wood bluntly that she should prepare to have the baby in Britain.

Calls to Australian government offices send the couple around on a recorded loop ­between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs.

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Since this story went to press, the Australian High Commission in the United Kingdom has been in touch with Ms Wood and is working with Qatar Airlines to get her and her partner to Sydney in the coming days.

Officials say that there has been a mistake in the system which should have alerted Qatar to Ms Wood’s vulnerability.

But The Australian has been alerted to another pregnant woman in London also trying to return home who also faces uncertainty about getting on a flight before she is considered medically unfit to fly.

Other Australians have also contacted The Australian to say that they too had been informed that they should pressure friends to allow them to stay on a blow up mattress on a floor. One family of four said they were told by officials that their only option was to ‘’couch surf’’ with friends and be ready to move at short notice if any flights opened up.

In recent days the Australian High Commission in the UK has been working to fill any no-shows within the caps by adding additional capacity on subsequent flights. It’s understood there are scores of “vulnerable’’ Australians who have no job, have relinquished their leases and have forwarded furniture, who have been helped to get back to Australia in this way from hubs in London, the Middle East and Asia.

However with airlines now not taking any new bookings until the new year, to try and work through the backlog of people who have been repeatedly bumped, some as many as ten times, there is a fresh buildup of demand by people whose life circumstances have changed.