Compassionate travel: After applying for an exemption to visit her mother with Terminal Cancer, Sirli was stranded in Estonia with her 1-year-old daughter. Desperate to return, she contacted 30 travel agents but only Nicolas was able to find her flights from the next day. She also managed to score a $4,000 refund on her daughter’s flight by adjusting the date while enjoying a business class stress-free return!
Did you travel alone?
With my daughter, she was 1 year old at the time of travel
Which city did you travel from?
We traveled from Tallinn, Estonia for Compassionate travel.
How was life overseas?
“I Was in Estonia for 3 months, they had restrictions that eased over the summer period over there. A rise was happening over the number of cases again. They had vaccinated the population heavily and introduced vaccination passports, so you had to show a vaccination passport or a negative test, and rapid testing was in place in some places.”
What is your Compassionate travel journey? What happened?
“I was meant to stay for 3 months; I had applied for a Compassionate travel exemption to see my mother who has terminal cancer. It was approved in April; I flew out at the beginning of May. My returned ticket with Qatar was canceled 2 weeks before because they reduced the incoming passenger flights, and we were affected by that.
I was using a different travel agent based in Estonia for Compassionate travel. They said they did not have an economy class ticket until Jan/Feb next year. They advised that with Qatar Airways business flight will be available in Oct/Nov costing almost 20,000 dollars a ticket.
So, I started looking at different Facebook groups, see who else people had recommended for agents. I Emailed about 30 different agents mostly in Australia, the majority of them could not get any flight before November. Only 3 agents, said they could get her back earlier.
Nicolas came back and offer a flight on the next day at 6 am the next morning. Because I could not get my PCR test, I flew out instead 6-7 days later. It was only 2 days later; we were originally meant to go back.”
What challenges did you face trying to find a flight on your own?
“I contacted the Australian government and the embassy. Because we left Australia under Compassionate travel, we were not eligible for any assistance. They said to try to go through airlines directly, but instead, I looked for people with a proven track record in getting people back. I could not afford business class, so the biggest challenge was finding a cheaper flight and I decided to put it on credit instead.
Did you try to contact other agencies?
They replied too late or never came back, some of them gave up saying it is too hard to get her back from where she is.”
How did you find out about the Fly Me Home program?
“It was on the Facebook group called Australian stuck around the world, I search travel agent, I read some feedback, and read about the experience getting back.”
What do you think of Nicolas’ work?
“I think he is doing an amazing job, especially how fast his correspondence is, and communicating through WhatsApp makes it so quick. I always felt looked after because he was always checking during the flight as well, where we are and where we are going.
Nicolas managed to get us on the flight before my daughter turned 2 years old which saved us 4000 dollars on business class.”
How were your flight and quarantine? How crowded was your flight?
“The flights were great, I flew business class, we had access to the business lounge, traveling with a young child it is quite stressful, so it made it easier.
I flew Tallinn to Frankfurt, that flight was full. From Frankfurt we flew to Tokyo, that flight was already reasonably empty. From Tokyo we flew to Sydney, that flight only had 20 people – we got very personalized services with all the flights from the flight attendant.
We had a 10-hour layover both in Frankfurt in Tokyo, so we used a transit hotel in Germany and made use of the business lounge in Tokyo for 10 hours.
The quarantine hotel was great, we were provided with 1 bedroom service apartment, we had a full kitchen, laundry, dryer, windows that open, and a lot of space. Meals were very great as well from a catering company. And the same from the services from the hotel.
I am now on home quarantine in Perth because the rules had changed while we were in Sydney and WA actually closed the border and put us in the extreme high-risk category. We are finishing our 28 days quarantine, but it is better because we are in our own home.”
What is your advice to other OZs stuck overseas?
“People who want to go overseas, I would say don’t, unless you are prepared to stay overseas for a very long time, not just a few months or unless you have a lot of money to spend on the flights, and even with a lot of money, there is no guarantees even. If you can stay where you are, and move on with your life, do that. If you are thinking about pay this money now or later, pay the money now before it’s too late. Everyone circumstance is different, it looks like it is going to open up at some stage, but it has been the case for 1.5 years already.”
How much did you end up paying for your return flight per person?
“We paid 11,000 for both of us. Instead of 15,000 if my daughter would have been 2 years old. Nicolas got me a 4,000AUD refund. It would have been paying double with other airlines and other agents when we were talking about November.”
Do you have many friends still stuck overseas?
“I have family members, relatives who were in a similar situation a year before I was. It took them 6 months and 8 canceled flights to get back. Which is why I did not want to sit and wait.”
When you heard about the Australian government slashing the cap on arrival how did it make you feel?
“At the time, I was just hoping that we would not be the ones being affected by it. I was a little bit naïve looking back, I should have tried to start getting back before it started, I was really hoping that it would not last that long and that we would have been the ones affected by it.”
Did you ever feel left out by the Australian government for not organising repatriation flights?
“Yes definitely. I signed up with the DFAT registry. But the advice from the embassy always was that because I voluntarily left, I was not eligible. I am still signed up with them until this day, and I have not heard anything from them about any repatriation flight, so I feel really left out in that sense.”
How excited are you to see your family?
“Very happy to see my husband who is quarantining with us. It was very sad to leave my family in Estonia but obviously very excited to see him. Obviously, we were at the point where we did not know when we would be able to see each other again.”
How was your mental health affected by being stranded overseas?
“Yes, definitely, I am very anxious. I feel it has been a range of emotion up and down and I feel will need to seek some professional counseling to cope with these emotions.
100% sure it will affect my ability to travel in the future. Despite that I am fully “vaxxed” as well, I would have expected that it would have helped in some way, but it has been no different. Now I would reconsider any travel if there was any sort of restrictions even for travel in Australia. We could not get a pass to enter WA until the night before our flight, so I would really reconsider any travel between any state in Australia.”
What is your 2s slogan message you would like to leave for Australians who need support overseas?
“My message to them would be “Don’t lose hope”. There are ways to get back if you find the right people, there are ways to get home.”
