Government chartering planes

[percheron67]

Surely I am not being unreasonable to deplore the Government spending 75 million on charter planes to bring back (a) people who are travelling and had plenty of time to return home and (b) foolish people who left the country after the Covid warnings.? The money would have better spent in defences for our NHS staff. I think that anyone who travelled regardless of the warnings we ALL had should shift for themselves.

I think that most posters have said MorganKitten that there are genuine cases such as people's employers being too slow in decision making and threatening to withhold pay /jobs.

Meanwhile..

www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-airfrance/air-france-working-with-government-to-help-repatriate-french-european-travelers-idUSKBN216219

(Several hundred repatriated today from South America)

Redwoodmaz read my post- I travelled mid Feb and it had already started escalating then- all of us travellers even then felt nervous- by time I was back Feb 21st it was totally escalating. No way would I have gone abroad- even for my brothers wedding- on 6 March. They are utter fools.

Unfortunately nothing is as simple as it seems. Those who decided to have their holidays without forward planning were very short sighted and as such it is indeed a shame that valuable resources are being used to bring them home.
In other cases there are many of us who work overseas, whose companies closed and who don't have the security of being paid during this period. There is an FCO flight leaving where I am tomorrow at a cost of £168, will I be on it.... no. I'm in the fortunate position of having my rent and bills paid and enough money to get by if I stick to local products, (nothing much open which helps). I know however many aren't in this position and will have to leave. Is it their fault... no, nobody knew how individual organisations and governments would respond so the decision to leave earlier wasn't an option.

I do smart slightly about the cost of it all. For every person that has a genuine reason for being stuck, I'm sure there is at least one other that decided to go on holiday and be damned.

I didn't go on a ski break departing Thu 12/03 as it was obvious that the situation was going to escalate and despite being relatively young and healthy I didn't want to take my chances of catching it and ending up in a hospital in France where I'm sure due to Brexit I'd have been low down the priority list, or alternatively trying to make it home if flights were cancelled. as France went into lockdown 2 days later. I did however have to lose the entire cost of my trip. I think by 6th or 7th March people were aware it was becoming a gamble to travel and those with health conditions should have been thinking about cancelling from that point.

percheron

You are not unreasonable. While I can see that for people on long haul trips there are problems with flights being limited by not being able to fly there normal routes, I recall a poster on here only last week, asking for advice about a toddler with a temperature. Turned out they had returned two days previously from a week in Spain ! Spain has been a corona hotspot for some time, why anyone would choose to go there in the middle of an epidemic , let alone with a toddler, is beyond me. You can't legislate for stupid.

I have to admit when I caught the story of the latest cruise ship not allowed to dock I did wonder why anyone would have gone on a cruise recently - there's been a fair number of high profile problems.

People working away, on a long trip or indeed on a year long cruise are very different. But some people were definitely in la la la mode

I agree with those saying there's a lot of 20:20 hindsight here.

Remember, before the FCO advised against travel, if people chose not to go they got no refund and no insurance payout. It's easy to say that someone else should throw away their holiday or even risk their job; it's not your money.

My dd went to NZ in Nov so long before this started. NZ were the first to close their borders plus flights were booked weeks in advance. The major hubs closed for transit with no notice. How could she know what would happen?
For her it took less than 2 weeks from working happily in a vineyard to borders everywhere closed

My bil is stuck on a tanker off Qatar. He lives in Thailand, they have closed the border to non nationals. He is a British national, if he can get a flight here we can isolate with him and he won't have to find a hotel.

I’m really glad I live in a country were the government does this.

What about those who live and work abroad?

A friend is stuck in NZ after travelling there at the end of December, they had 48 hours notice to leave, the few free seats on planes became incredibly expensive, the cheapest being £15,000. As she is a citizen of South Korea (despite not living there for almost twenty years) she is also now unable to transit through some countries.

Her employer (who sent her there) are no longer paying her, she’s 24 weeks pregnant, so she has a limited window to be able to fly home. Her husband is self employed so sending money out to support her has been very difficult.