Last night, as I was finalising my arrangements for diving in Sipadan, an email came through from Malaysia Airlines advising that my return flight home to New Zealand had been cancelled. Arrggghhh! With Covid-19, flight cancellation are rife and this was a risk that I had been wary of. But I needed to be with family and I took that risk.
My immediate action was to reschedule my existing booking to a date which hadn’t been cancelled. They had two flights on 4 September and 18 September. The former is far too early and the latter still too early, considering I had just spent 2 weeks in hotel quarantine and would have a further two in Auckland.
Even if I did book on one of those two flights, there’s no guarantee that my booking (or less likely the entire flight) wouldn’t be cancelled. New Zealand is short of quarantine beds and the government is controlling how many seats airlines can sell. In Australia, inbound flights are capped at 30 passengers but in New Zealand the number isn’t fixed or publicised. Some airlines have had to cancel firm bookings to keep under the passenger quota.
Later than that, it seems their flights resume in March 2021 with a skeleton service and in earnest April 2021.
I now feel stuck. Show me the way to go home! Then I pulled myself together. It’s not like I’m stuck in a foreign country with high expenses. I’m in my own apartment in my hometown with family that I should spend time with.
Today I worked through some flight options. It is too early to make any firm commitment as a lot can change in the next 2-3 months, which is when I want to travel back to Auckland.
Many airlines aren’t operating. Singapore Airlines is operating limited services and Cathay Pacific is showing a resumption from late October. With the latter, I think it is more that they haven’t cancelled their flights that far ahead.
Should more airlines resume services, it’s not a matter of simply booking the flights. Many countries still prohibit entry or even transit to foreigners.