South Australia Cancels Air India Repatriation Flight

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The Australian High Commissioner Barry O’Farrell tweeted a thread on August 5 informing that the South Australian govt cannot accept Air India to Adelaide from Delhi on 6 August.

The flight scheduled for Adelaide will instead land in Sydney on 8 August but will only be ferrying 105 passengers, as NSW has also nearly reached its limit on repatriated Australians in hotel quarantine.

The South Australian govt has advised that they cannot accept the Air India to Adelaide from Delhi on 6 August. We have managed to secure agreement for the flight to depart Delhi for Sydney on 8 August instead, to minimise impact on passengers“, the tweet said.

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Unfortunately, the flight will need to travel with a reduced allocation of 105 passengers, as quarantine facilities in Sydney are almost at full capacity. Air India will contact passengers who will not be able to travel on the in relation to refunding canceled tickets.” the HC said in the next tweet of the thread.

And the last tweet mentioned that, “We understand this news will be extremely frustrating and we apologise to those of you who have already commenced your journey to Delhi.

However, the flight was canceled to ease pressure on medi-hotel capacity, according to South Australia.

The state has recorded a total of 456 cases as of 5 August, out of which at least five recent cases were linked to returned travellers from India.

SA Health department said that they cancelled the repatriation flight from India so they can “balance all of the demands on the state’s medi-hotel capacity.”

“Our first priority is for domestic quarantine. We have also got a number of international arrivals already with us and a number of charter flights in the next few days. We will be prioritising scheduled flights over charter,” the SA Health said in a statement.

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At present, SA has a 500 person per week cap on the number of international arrivals, Sydney is only taking in 350 passengers per day and Melbourne has completely halted all inbound passenger flights.


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Manish Khandelwal
Manish Khandelwal

Manish Khandelwal, a travel-tech enthusiast with over a decade of experience in the travel industry. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Travelobiz.com, he's passionate about writing.

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