Australian travel and tourism industry veteran Graeme Archer is among thousands of Australians stuck overseas waiting to come home, as northern hemisphere winter approaches and the border caps restrict arrivals to a few thousand a week.
Archer is director of marketing with UK-based Spirit of Remembrance, and joint founder of the company, which specialises in quality battlefield and remembrance travel and touring. With business impacted by the pandemic, Archer and his wife Nikki Archer-Waring are keen to come home to Australia, but the path is not easy.
ABC News reporter Jane Bardon related yesterday how Archer had to have open-heart surgery in London, “and waiting for the follow-up operation, he’s become increasingly alarmed as the UK’s Covid cases surge”.
“Winter’s coming now, the nights are drawing in, summer’s over and of course the UK just let it go way too far with all the relaxation of the rules, etc,” Archer told Bardon on The World Today.
With strict limits on the number of Australians allowed to travel home, Archer is worried about whether he will get bumped off the flights back to Australia he has been able to book – which are not until March, Bardon said.
“Having to wait now through winter, past Christmas to get back home, is scaring us all,” Archer told her.
“We’re in touch with other groups and we’re all really, really concerned, not just about our personal circumstances but about our health, because this is back on again and we can’t get out of here.”
The British Government’s top scientific and medical advisers say coronavirus infections are currently doubling every seven days in the UK and could rise to 49,000 a day by mid-October unless urgent action is taken.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that since his cabinet agreement with the states last week to offer more quarantine places, he could lift the cap on international arrivals, from 4000 to 6000 a week.
From Archer’s perspective, having worked for years in the airline industry, that rise wouldn’t solve much.
“The increase in caps last week works out, talking to a carrier, to about five seats a flight, so it really hasn’t helped,” Archer said.
“We’re all dumbfounded because one concentrated exercise could bring all the Australians back in four or five charter flights.”
The ABC Radio news program also spoke with other stranded Australians, all keen to return home.
Archer’s career spans 40 years executive management within the travel, tourism and leisure industry in Australia and Britain. He was director of sales and marketing at Sheraton Mirage Resort Port Douglas, he headed United Vacations (United Airlines’ travel division) and he co-founded Travel Online – Australia’s first dedicated online inbound and DMC travel business – in 1995.
Written by Peter Needham
There are approx 30,000 Australians registered as wanting to get home. Assuming 500 per Airbus A380 flight works out at 60 charters flights, not 4 to 5. Then those 30,000 are spread out all over the world, not just in the UK.