How did three hardworking women at one travel agency in New Zealand manage to get numerous flights organised and hundreds of Aussies stranded in South America back on home soil?
Yesterday we shared the fabulous story of the x Travel team, who have been working hard across the Tasman to help bring home stranded Australians.
Today we’re digging a little deeper and sharing a behind the scenes look of how it all happened.
A wild ride to say the least…
So far, Queenstown based Fanny, Niki and Tori have remarkably organised 4 inbound and 6 outbound repatriation flights across the Pacific.
The team have described the process as a “complete roller-coaster” ride.
When we spoke with Tori, she said “in the space of 4 weeks since we confirmed the flight we have had one date change which meant we had to reissue heaps of internal South American flights, and we’ve also had to have a destination change.”
“This flight was originally scheduled to arrive in Melbourne with 90 passengers. We worked really hard with LATAM on pricing and were eventually given the opportunity to`bunny hop’ from Melbourne to Sydney with another 25 passengers.”
“At the same time, we were able to secure another 7 seats into Melbourne which was going to give us a total of 122 seats. With 100 seats sold and accounted for we were able to start finalising the last 22 seats,” she continued.
However, the timing of all this happened to be when Dan Andrews made his Friday ‘short sharp circuit breaker’ lockdown announcement; 10 days before the flight was due to depart South America.
Monday 15 February rolled around, which Tori said felt like months ago already, and the x Travel team had no clarity, even though DFAT were working around the clock to get confirmation of whether or not the charter flight could arrive in Melbourne, or whether or not it could bunny hop up and down the East Coast of Australia to try and get as many people home as possible.
Thankfully DFAT did however confirm that they could get 71 seats into Sydney.
It’s worth noting that X Travel personally chartered this flight, meaning the agency paid out the entire cost of the flight (half a million dollars), upfront.
This repatriation differs from previous flights the team had organised; as they had been cargo flights that were able to facilitate passengers.
Fanny, Niki and Tori had budgeted and worked out the per-seat pricing for 122 seats.
This meant that with only 71 seats to Sydney, X Travel would have either had to scrap the entire flight or charge everyone extra, as – with the Victorian restrictions – a shortfall of $214,500.
Tori explained that the seats inbound were fixed, so they can work out the costs on those, but the outbound seats were dynamic.
“While there are commercial services through the USA or the Middle East operating with as many seats as the plane can carry (reasonable pricing is of course difficult inbound when there are reduced caps) the outbound seats are more expensive than what people can pay on a commercial service, so the uptake is not great.” Tori said.
At the last minute on Wednesday night – 5 days before the flight was due to depart and with no passengers knowing the flight was booked, to save any disappointment – the X Travel contact at DFAT confirmed the flight could have 120 seats into Sydney.
The girls were over the moon, as you could imagine. The news did mean they only had a few days to sell and confirm the last 20 seats, which they had put a stop sell on after the VIC border closed.
This was also the first flight where every passenger needed a PCR COVID-test, which didn’t leave the team with much time.
The last flight seat was sold 36 hours before the flight was due to depart. Thankfully the passenger was in Sao Paulo where rapid tests can be completed in 4 hours.
A flight good to go
It was a full flight and all but four passengers were good to go.
Tori said “check-in staff in airports other than SCL don’t understand how charter flights work, so my amazing business partner Niki Davies and myself donned our pyjamas and pulled an all-nighter on Monday night to assist with check-in. This meant making sure everyone got on the plane.”
She said that Brazil presented the most challenges, even going so far as to deny a 31-week pregnant lady boarding her flight because they felt her 60-hour old COVID-test wasn’t sufficient. Thankfully, the passenger was rerouted via RIO got on the plane safely.
The plane landed safely yesterday morning in Sydney with very happy faces on board.
Today, the flight leaves New Zealand for South America, reuniting 64 outbound passengers with their families once again.
A massive well done goes to the X Travel team, you really have made a huge difference in the lives of many people.
This is what being #TogetherinTravel is all about.