Stranded Aussies ordered to pay $10,000 to return

Australian business class travellers are being forced to pay more than $10,000 for a one way first class seat.

Emma Price and her family are stranded in the UK.

Australian business class travellers are now being routinely bumped off flights back to Australia, forcing those who can afford it to pay more than $10,000 for a one-way first class seat.

In a rapid escalation of the flight chaos brought about by the Australian government’s current 4000 a week cap on incoming arrivals, families and business people who have had longstanding expensive bookings in business class to return to Australia are now joining tens of thousands of economy class passengers left stranded on the other side of the world.

Since July, airlines flying into Australian cities have restricted passenger numbers to 30 a flight, and had been routinely bumping economy and premium economy passengers – sometimes more than 10 times – to give priority to the more expensive paying passengers.

But The Australian can reveal the cancellations are now filtering through to business class because of the huge backlog being built up.

On Thursday Emirates bumped business class passengers from flight EK414 and Qatar has done the same for QR004 leaving Heathrow today (Friday). These are not passengers who have upgraded, but are people who paid full business class fares some as far back as January.

Emma Young at Tower Bridge in London. She is now stranded in the UK.

Australian family Emma Young, her husband and their two daughters Amelia, three and Georgia, eight months, booked to return to Brisbane immediately new flights became available on Qatar Airlines several months ago and they gave notice on their London property and sorted accommodation in Brisbane.

As late as Sunday their seats were confirmed, but yesterday they received a call from Qatar Airlines, bumping them off its just over a day’s notice and without any offer of a possible alternative flight.

By the time they received the call, the family had already had had their furniture collected by removalists, and their two cats had been picked up and are now en route to Australia on a cargo flight. When The Australian contacted them in the hour before they were being made homeless the family was desperately calling airlines, sitting on a small blow up air bed in the empty lounge room.

Amelia, 3, beside one of the family's packing cases.

“I just don’t know what we will do if we can’t get on the flight, we are out of the house as of lunchtime and have booked a hotel room for tonight, but then what do we do?’’, Mrs Young said.

“If Qatar had told us earlier we could have made arrangements, but we have been abandoned’’.

Another woman who was bumped five times, outlaid money for a new business class seat on the same flight, but was also cancelled.

Another distraught Australian couple who booked business class on a different flight appear to have one member of their party still confirmed, while the other has been bumped.

In all cases the airlines don’t offer any compensation as it is a situation brought about by the Australian government restrictions.

Mrs Young said the airline told her that there were diplomatic and maritime staff on her flight with no room for other business passengers. But after ringing the Department of Home Affairs she was told that Qatar had some flexibility in request seats “in special cases’’ and that it wasn’t true the flight was filled with diplomats and maritime staffers.

Other passengers have been told by airlines that the situation is so messy the Australian government is prioritising passengers and telling the airlines which passengers to allow onto the flights based on various exemptions.

But even this has exposed flaws, with two workers returning to the country for work classified as “essential’’ among the five people bumped from a flight in Ireland overnight – receiving the news at the airport. One of the other passengers had a young baby.

The bottleneck is most pronounced in the Middle East hubs, as Australians from all over Europe try to get home through Dubai and Qatar,

Other business passengers who have been bumped off are being told the earliest availability is in three months time near Christmas. Economy paying passengers appear to have no chance this year. Some Australians have given up on returning in the short and medium terms, including one family that has cancelled confirmed work in Melbourne and has instead flown to Portugal.

Julian Ayres, a carpenter living in Richmond, England, and originally from Sydney, says Australia’s free-spirited and relaxed international reputation was now in tatters.

“What is the end game? At what point does the government open the border and loosen the cap numbers? I can hop on a flight to anywhere in Europe at the moment with just two hours notice, but I can’t get a seat – even a business seat – to any city in Australia for at least nine weeks.’’