Travel for compassionate reason: It only took 8 hours to secure a successful return flight!
Time was running out, 6 months after his mother’s passed away, Ian was forced to travel to Canada to facilitate the transition of his father to an age care facility. After a failed attempt to apply for a travel exemption. Ian had only a few days to secure his returned flight. A local member of parliament recommended him to contact immediately Nicolas Delacharlerie. Height hours later on a Friday night, Ian had already secured a returned flight to go help his family. How do you secure a return flight when you travel for compassionate reason?
Travel for compassionate reason – can you tell us where are you at the moment and why? Which city did you travel from? Where did you go? Did you travel alone?
“So I live in Sydney, so I travelled from my hometown of Sydney and I travel to Toronto Canada where my Canadian family lives (where I am from originally) and I was granted a travel exemption to care for my ageing father in Canada who needed to transition from living alone to an age care facility. My mother (his wife for 65 years) died in February and because of the covid-19 restrictions I was unable to visit during that traumatic time. My father health has declined since that time and needed to transition and I needed to be there with him to make that transition. I was fortunate enough to secure an exemption to go and visit him.”
Travel for compassionate reason – What is your journey? What happened?
“I applied twice for an exemption to travel. The first time I was rejected and that rejection took a little over two weeks to come and so I managed to collect extra evidence of my needs to travel and was granted an exemption on the second application.
I stay two months and the return was incident free because I had a return flight before I left. I will say though, that I’m guessing that one of the reasons that my return was incident free was because basically I paid a lot of money secure my return flight and I’m completely aware of that are many, perhaps most people, can’t afford to just pay a lot of money particularly if they have families trying to return to Australia. So it is an unfair situation but a one that I WAS able to comply with because I had the means and because it was so important to me to see my father in Canada.”
How was life overseas?
“Canada is about 70% fully vaccinated across country. Whilst it is much higher Covid-19 than Australia has, hospitalizations are not overwhelming the system and so life is relatively free there, so basically you can go pretty much anywhere you want, you just need to wear a mask. Restaurants, shops, everything are open and they just don’t have limits like we have here before the latest lockdown. My father transitioned to an age care home (that was my catalyst for going there), I needed to get tested every day that I visited him in his age care facility and there are extremely cautious so even though I was fully vaccinated, I needed to be tested every day that I went to visit him in the age care home.”
Travel for compassionate reason – What challenges did you face trying to find a flight on your own?
“So I had no challenges actually, because Nicolas at ‘World Travel Connections’ did everything for me, frankly. He managed on extremely short notice to get me flight out and back in. I will tell you that on such short notice, I was trying to get to Canada by July 23rd which was when my father was scheduled to move from his apartment to age care. So I desperately wanted to be there to help him with that which was the whole reason for me going there. I didn’t get my travel exemption until the Friday before so literally one week in advance of the deadline. On the Friday afternoon, I called Nicolas because I could finally arrange travel thanks to my exception, and by the Friday night, so literally in less than 8 hours, he had returned flights booked for me. So it was just a matter for me of getting my Covid-19 test. I then left on the Monday morning.
so I called him on Friday about 1:00 o’clock. At 8:00 PM on Friday, he worked late and he got me a flight, and I left Monday morning, Wow!
I owe him a large deed of gratitude for really going above and beyond to secure my trip. Frankly was incredibly important to me to make this trip. I hadn’t seen my family in almost two years because of the pandemic, including missing the death of my mother, so was incredibly important to me to go see my father and Nicolas was instrumental in helping me to get there.”
Did you try to contact other agencies?
“No. I had been put onto Nicolas by mutual friends. And this mutual friend who actually works for our local member of parliament and so has helped many people get to Australia during the pandemic. He said, look there’s only one way to get there, it is Nicolas, he is the expert. So just call him and he’ll sort you out.”
Travel for compassionate reason – How much did you end up paying for your entire flight per person?
The return flight cost me $17,000 and that was economy one way and business back. And the reason that it was business back was that was a way to secure me not getting bumped. Normally that flight would’ve cost probably a third of that. Normally I would fly economy both ways which would have been about $2,500. Even though that an eye watering price to pay for a flight, what price is family. Because I have the means to pay, I was willing to pay to see my father in Canada.
What do you think of Nicolas’ work?
“In a word: exceptional.”
Travel for compassionate reason – What is your advice to other OZs stuck overseas or planning to go overseas?
“Well planning to go overseas is just from my own experience with the very tight restrictions on returning travellers you need every piece of evidence that you can master to include in your application to travel. And then sadly, if you can buy your way back, if you can afford to do that, that will secure your return sooner without the worry of getting bumped multiple times. I’ve certainly had heard of many people who get bumped from flights and you can’t blame the Airlines. The flight that I left Sydney had about 50 people on a 400 person capacity then ironically my flight from LA to Toronto was completely full, not an empty seat so 400 people on it. Then my flight back again from Toronto to LA was fully booked. And from LA to Sydney there were only 14 people on the plane, only 14 people, 14!
I know because I asked the flight attendants and I said how is it possible you can afford to fly? She said we’re covering some of our costs by carrying extra cargo. But you can’t blame the airlines because they can’t be even covering their marginal costs with that kind of capacity. It is not the airlines that you blame for favouring passengers that are able to pay more. I have no blame here, it’s not all fair particularly to people who can’t afford to buy their way back. It is what it is, until the travel restrictions ease, which apparently it looks like we’re hoping for November according to government statements.”
Travel for compassionate reason – How excited were you to see your family?
“Beyond words actually. I’ve lived overseas for more than 20 years. Family are considered to be very important to me, and I’m used to going to Canada at least once or twice a year to see my family and there were some very important things that happened in my family this year. The death of my mother in February, my ageing father unable to look after himself, I was traumatised frankly not to being able to go and see:
- my mother before she died;
- my father and my sister after my mother died;
- my father in his time of great need.
So it is beyond words to describe how important it was for me to travel. Now that I’m back it is one of the things that I will cherish for my entire life.”
How was your mental health affected by being stranded overseas?
“My mental health was vastly improved by being able to travel and the conditions of travel were not onerous except for the cost. My mental health was very affected around the death of my mother and since the death of my mother through my frustration at not being able to go and see her and not see my family. Then when I received the rejection for the exemption to travel for my father’s need which I thought was very compelling, I was devastated. In fact I went to see my doctor after that, he even wrote a letter for my anxiety, in some despair, I included it in my second application which I can only imagine helped to get me approved on the second time.
The main difference between the first application and the second one was a letter from my doctor attesting to my distress mental and emotional state and my inability to travel to see my family, particularly my father at a time of great need and to achieve closure around the death of my mother six months earlier.”
How was your flight and quarantine? How crowded was your flight?
“It’s fine frankly. Nobody would choose to do it, but I feel very well looked after, under the circumstances. Everybody from the time I landed in Sydney until this moment, every single person that has come across, from the army, the police the hotel personal, the doctors and nurses, even the security guards on the floor, there are all incredibly helpful. They’re all trying to make your experience as comfortable as possible. I also took the advantage of an upgrade option that I learned coincidentally through a friend that gives you more space and opening windows and kitchen end, internal laundry which will make it much more pleasurable than it is otherwise. I realised that again that costs money and most people can’t afford to do that particularly if they have families travelling with them and so I’m grateful that I can pay for extra comfort. You might see I’ve got a rowing machine in the background. When I expressed interest in exercising, the hotel that I’m staying at sent me a link to a company which provides fitness equipment delivered to your room.”
What is your 2s message you would like to leave for Australians who need support overseas?
“If it’s important enough to you, you will find a way to overcome the practical challenges involved in travel. Sadly, if you can pay a bit more you’re more likely to not get bumped off on a return flight and that’s just a sad reality. I understand why the situation is the way it is, it shouldn’t be quite so onerous but overall I accept the situation the way it is. I accept that I have privileges that many other people don’t have that enabled me to do what I’m doing. Overall I’m grateful for the opportunity to see my family and I accept the conditions that go with it in this current time.”
