News

Flying taxis moved a step closer to becoming a fixture buzzing across urban skyscapes, as a closely watched effort was unveiled in Los Angeles and startups in the UK and Brazil made commercial breakthroughs.

Vertical Aerospace, based in Bristol, England, won conditional orders for as many as 1000 electric aircraft that could total $US4 billion ($5.2 billion) from buyers including American Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Airways it said.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Embraer said it’s in talks to merge its unit developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft into a public company, sending the stock surging.

And in California, startup Archer Aviation showcased its future eVTOL after nabbing a $US20 million investment from United Airlines. The carrier plans to buy as many as 200 of the aircraft, dubbed Maker.

While none are certified for commercial use, approvals for electric flying taxis could come as early as 2024, according to Europe’s top aviation regulator. Airlines are placing orders because they see the potential to develop a new business tied to local transport, as their main activity shuttling people on longer trips comes under pressure over carbon emissions and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We believe that this is the beginning of the next big evolution of urban air mobility,” said Domhnal Slattery, chief executive officer of aircraft lessor Avolon Holdings, which is investing $US15 million in Vertical Aerospace. “This is probably as significant as the jet age.”

Flying taxis are designed to accommodate just a few passengers, akin to an electrified helicopter. But they are quieter, more agile and emission-free, utilising multiple small electric rotors.

The aircraft are designed to make short trips, with a range of 160 kilometres or less, and are expected to ferry well-heeled commuters above congestion-plagued urban spots - to the airport, for example, or a weekend getaway. Many eVTOL makers plan to eventually transition to pilotless aircraft.

The popularity of special purpose acquisition vehicles has been a catalyst to the budding industry.

Vertical Aerospace is going public through a reverse merger with Broadstone Acquisition in a SPAC deal that values the combined companies’ equity at about $US2.2 billion.

Archer, based in Palo Alto, California, plans to merge with a SPAC run by investment banker Ken Moelis later this year that would value the combined company at about $US3.8 billion. Archer expects the Maker will make its first flights in the fourth quarter and begin commercial production next year, assisted by the automaker Stellantis. Service is projected to start in Los Angeles and Miami in 2024.

“There’s definitely a really big long-term industry here,” said e-commerce entrepreneur Marc Lore, Archer’s largest individual investor. “I don’t really think anybody would disagree with that.”

Embraer surged 15 per cent on Thursday (US time) after confirming that it’s in talks to merge its Eve Urban Air Mobility division with blank-cheque company Zanite Acquisition, giving it a valuation of about $US2 billion.

Two other eVTOL companies, Joby Aviation and Lilium GmbH, have agreed to go public through SPAC mergers. Another German startup, Volocopter GmbH, has backing from airport operator Atlantia SpA and others.

Last week, Eve said it struck a partnership with Halo Aviation, a helicopter travel provider in the US and UK, with delivery of 200 aircraft starting in 2026.

Commercial use of eVTOLs is expected to begin with carrying packages before passengers are added to the cabins.

And automated flights, without pilots, will come around five years later, as global regulators work out their approaches to safety.

Australians are enjoying some of the cheapest domestic airfares in a decade as airlines cut ticket prices to coax travellers back into the sky and country carrier Rex injects fresh competition into major city routes.

The Australia Competition and Consumer Commission said on Thursday that the impact of Rex (Regional Express) moving onto domestic services could be seen in lower prices on all six routes it has entered.

That was especially the case on the Sydney-Melbourne corridor, Australia’s busiest, where the cheapest available economy fare fell to its lowest level in a decade, the competition watchdog said in its latest airline monitoring report.

“As well as the airlines trying to get people flying again... the entry of Rex has certainly meant that to a lot of destinations, the airfares are extremely good at the moment,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said.

The ACCC notes in its report that Sydney-Brisbane and Melbourne-Brisbane, which Rex is not flying, has not seen the same fall in ticket prices as Sydney-Melbourne, which “highlights the new entrant’s role in increasing competition and lowering airfares delivering benefits to consumers”.

Rex, which for two decades has flown turboprop aircraft to regional and rural destinations around the country, has leased a small fleet of Boeing 737 jet aircraft and launched on Sydney-Melbourne in March.

Rex, Virgin, Qantas and its budget arm Jetstar are also now all flying on Melbourne–Gold Coast, Melbourne–Adelaide and Sydney–Gold Coast. It is the first time three airline groups have been competing for travellers since Virgin bought a majority stake in Tigerair in 2013.

Rex is also servicing Sydney-Canberra and is due to start flying Melbourne-Canberra next week.

Mr Sims said the ACCC was continuing to investigate whether there was merit to claims by Rex that Qantas and Virgin were dumping capacity on certain routes to squeeze the smaller airline out of the market.

Qantas has added 45 new routes to its domestic network since the start of the pandemic and intends its capacity to be 7 per cent higher next financial year compared to 2019, with Jetstar to be 20 per cent higher.

The airline said on Thursday it had expanded its three-year agreement with aviation services group Alliance to operate Embraer E190 jet aircraft on some smaller routes.

Alliance is already flying five of its 94-seat E190s for Qantas on routes such as Canberra-Adelaide, and the expanded deal means Qantas now has options over 18 aircraft, up from 14.

Chief executive Alan Joyce said the E190 was perfect for connecting capital cities and regional centres with services that would not have worked with Qantas’ larger Boeing 737s.

Meanwhile another three Airbus A320s will move from Jetstar’s Singapore subsidiary back to Australia to fly domestically, joining six already here from Jetstar Japan and five Boeing 787 Dreamliners set to operate domestic flights to meet demand.

“Since travel demand started to recover about a year ago, our strategy has been to think creatively about how we use our fleet to add capacity back in, generate revenue and get more of our people back to work,” Mr Joyce said.

Mr Joyce said forward bookings suggested demand for travel to and from Melbourne would rebound quickly with the easing of restrictions following its latest lockdown.

The ACCC said in its report that the Qantas Group’s market share was now 69 per cent, up from 61 per cent before the pandemic. That follows Virgin shutting down its Tigerair offshoot when it went into administration last year, and Jetstar benefit from strong leisure travel demand.

Domestic airline capacity has been steadily recovering following the almost total grounding of air-travel last year and was back to 55 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in March. However the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne has been a setback by halting most interstate travel.

The ACCC said the federal government scheme to subsidise 800,000 half-priced flights as part of a $1.2 billion assistance package for the pandemic-stricken aviation industry also helped drive down fares.

Sydney Airport’s board has rejected a $22 billion takeover proposal from a consortium of investors, arguing that a sale of the “strategic and irreplaceable” airport is not in the best interests of investors.

The board said the $8.25 per share indicative offer from IFM Investors, the US’s Global Infrastructure Partners and QSuper was opportunistic and priced at a level well below where Sydney Airport’s shares had traded before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Sydney Airport is strongly positioned to deliver growth as vaccination rates increase and we move into the post pandemic recovery period,” the board said.

“It has rapidly adapted to the COVID environment, strengthening its balance sheet, and tightly managing costs to maintain flexibility to respond to a range of recovery scenarios and pursue sensible growth opportunities as the recovery unfolds.”

The board said the proposal was not in the best interests of securityholders, citing the “strategic and irreplaceable” nature of the airport.

“Sydney Airport is Australia’s largest airport and is the gateway to international travel in and out of Australia.”

The board acknowledged that the airport’s shares were likely to trade below the offer of $8.25 per share in the short term, but said it would only progress a change in control transaction “on terms that deliver and recognise appropriate long term value for Sydney Airport securityholders.”

Sydney Airport’s shares were trading close to $9 in late 2019 before the pandemic hit, but the company did a $2 billion capital raising in August 2020 priced at $4.56 per share to strengthen its balance sheet.

Adjusted for the capital raising, the airport’s share price was worth around $7.76 before the pandemic.

The stock slumped to under $5 in March 2020 after flights around the world were grounded but recovered this year as domestic flights returned and were close to $6 before the takeover proposal was announced on July 5.

The stock subsequently soared and traded at $7.84 on Thursday, with investors expecting the consortium to return with a higher offer.

The board said the airport was a well-managed and capitalised asset with a long term lease, lasting until 2097, and had consistently delivered value to investors with annual shareholder returns of 19 per cent from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2019.

It said the airport had diverse earnings, generating income from charging fees to airlines as charging rents to shops, restaurants and car rental agencies, and had the potential to develop more commercial enterprises.

The indicative proposal required access to due diligence and a recommendation from airport’s board to proceed.

The consortium could return with a higher offer to secure due diligence, or it could go hostile and take an offer directly to Sydney Airport’s shareholders.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has already warned that it would take an extremely close look at any formal taekover proposal, given IFM and QSuper already own stakes in other Australian airports.

Airlines are also expected to raise concerns with the competition watchdog if the consortium proceeds with a higher offer amid fears the consortium would raise aeronautical fees to secure returns for their members.

IFM already owns 20 per cent of Brisbane Airport and 25 per cent of Melbourne Airport, while QSuper holds a stake (it has not disclosed the size) in Brisbane Airport through the Queensland Investment Corporation.

The bidding consortium’s takeover proposal includes a condition that UniSuper keeps its existing 15.3 per cent stake in Sydney Airport.

Because of rules that prevent any one entity holding more than 15 per cent of Sydney Airport if it also owns stakes of 15 per cent or more in Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth Airports, IFM’s stake in Sydney Airport would be limited to 15 per cent – unless it sells down its other airport stakes.

Rex Airlines plans to add four more jet aircraft to its fleet by September in a faster than anticipated ramp-up of its capital city challenge to Qantas and Virgin.

The country airline on Wednesday also called on its larger rivals to match its policy of giving full refunds to any passenger whose travel plans are disrupted by COVID-19 outbreaks, saying concerns about cancellations are holding back the tourism industry’s recovery.

“One of the problems we have at the moment is that people still don’t necessarily have confidence to travel because they may not necessarily get their money back if they can't travel,” Rex deputy chairman John Sharp said.

Rex stepped up its war of words with Qantas on Wednesday by publishing full-page newspaper advertisements highlighting complaints from customers on social media about obtaining refunds from the country’s biggest airline.

Mr Sharp said Rex had processed all eligible refund requests since April 1, and that Qantas’ approach was further hurting consumer confidence.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the airline already gave customers the choice of a refund for flights it cancels due to COVID-19 and would not respond to Rex’s “repeated attempts to drag Qantas into a public slanging match”. Qantas’ website says it currently takes around eight weeks to process refunds.

After servicing regional routes with turboprop aircraft for the past 20 years, Rex last year secured $150 million in private equity funding to lease six Boeing 737 jets and challenge Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin in the capital city market.

Mr Sharp said Rex was close to finalising leases on four more Boeing 737s to enter service within “the next couple of months”, boosting its jet fleet to 10 and enabling it to add more capital cities to its network likely starting with Brisbane.

Rex had intended to have 10 jets by the end of 2021 but Mr Sharp said it was taking delivery sooner based on the response to its services so far. “Load factors have been good, the take-up has been good and the feedback we’re getting is very positive and encouraging,” he said. “So we’re keen to get those aircraft into service and add further destinations to our network.”

Qantas boss Alan Joyce said in April that Rex had presided over “the worst launch of a new jet airline in Australia’s aviation history”, with some flights flying empty.

Mr Sharp said that while some flights had low passenger numbers, that was not unusual in the airline business and that passenger load had been “much better than I had envisaged”.

Rex launched flights between Sydney and Melbourne in March followed by services from Melbourne and Sydney to the Gold Coast, and between Melbourne to Adelaide. It is scheduled to commence Melbourne-Canberra flights on June 10, subject to Victoria’s COVID travel restrictions, after putting turboprops on Sydney-Canberra in April.

Qantas has said that it is on track to return to 95 per cent of its pre-COVID domestic capacity in the June quarter.

• Australians vaccinated against COVID-19 could be permitted to travel internationally as early as July, according to a proposal raised by Health Minister Greg Hunt, Guardian Australia reported.
• Hunt is said to have told the Coalition party room that vaccinated travellers could be allowed to bypass 14 days of hotel quarantine, facing reduced restrictions instead.
• The news comes more than a year after Australia closed its international border, and as the nation attempts to drive vaccine uptake within the community.

Australians vaccinated against COVID-19 could be permitted to leave and reenter the country as early as July, under a proposal Health Minister Greg Hunt reportedly raised before parliamentary allies.

Guardian Australia reports Hunt proposed the trial before the Coalition party room on Tuesday, saying the government is gaming out scenarios for how vaccine take-up could soften Australia’s hard border.

That early analysis suggests a vaccine passport-style arrangement could begin some six to eight weeks from now, according to The Guardian.

Australia slammed its international border shut in March 2020 in an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19. Overseas travel has been banned since then, with very few exemptions, and those entering Australia must undergo two weeks of hotel quarantine.

The border closure has effectively cleaved families apart, leaving tens of thousands of Australians stranded overseas. It has also ravaged Australia’s tourism and higher education sectors, which turned to international visitors and students for much of their trade.

To date, New Zealand is the only country Australians can travel to without undergoing two weeks of hotel quarantine.

The 2021-2022 Federal Budget suggests the border will reopen in mid-2022 at the earliest, pending vaccination rates.

Proposals raised in the party room reportedly include allowing vaccinated travellers to leave quarantine once they have returned a negative COVID-19 test, instead of staying isolated for the full 14 days.

Beyond stimulating the tourism and aviation sectors, there is hope such an arrangement would reduce the vaccine hesitancy in some corners of the community, which, paradoxically, could keep Australia’s border closed even longer.

Even so, surveys taken before Victoria’s latest COVID-19 lockdown suggest large cohorts of the Australian population are comfortable keeping the border closed until at least mid-2022, even if full vaccination is reached by the end of 2021.

Speaking to reporters in May, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said vaccine passports would be the “next step” in Australia’s reopening to the world.

The Federal Government must “plan for when we reopen, but it’s not safe to do it yet,” he said at the time.

“And so we’ll keep planning and we’ll get those processes in place.”

Billions of frequent flyer points along with travel vouchers and status credits could be rewarded to people who get COVID-19 jabs as Qantas pushes to get Australians vaccinated as quickly as possible.

As states once again shut their borders to Victoria following a fourth statewide lockdown, Qantas and Jetstar are looking at options to boost vaccine uptake to get borders reopened permanently.

“As a large company that relies on travel to put our people and planes back to work, we’re obviously motivated to help with the national vaccine effort,” Qantas chief customer officer Stephanie Tully said.

“Qantas is a big supporter of Australia’s vaccine rollout because of what it means for public health, but also because it’s the key to keeping our domestic borders open and safely restarting international travel as well.”

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly on Monday said a range of vaccine incentives were “on the table” and behavioural economists floated a range of ideas to boost uptake.

“I think we really do need to look for incentives, as many incentives as we can, for people to become vaccinated,” Professor Kelly said.

Incentives adopted around the world include vaccine lotteries, product discounts, free burgers and beers and more traditional behaviour economics “nudges” such as text and environment-prompted messages.

A poll last week suggested 30 per cent of Australians would shun the jab, with 15 per cent of adults surveyed reporting they were “not at all likely” to be vaccinated. Another 14 per cent reported being “not very likely”.

It is understood the options being considered by Qantas include giving people who get both their two COVID-19 jabs up to 1000 frequent flyer points, flight vouchers towards domestic and international flights, and status credits, which allow people to move into high Frequent Flyer tiers.

Any reward would be available to people who had already received their jabs and the program would run until the end of 2021 when the vaccine rollout is due to be completed; the details are yet to be completed.

“There are already a lot of good reasons to get a vaccine as soon as you’re able to, and we’d be happy to add another one to the list. Hopefully, other companies are looking at incentive options as well,” Ms Tully said.

“Every time a state border has reopened and when the bubble with New Zealand started, we’ve seen a big spike in people wanting to fly. The demand for domestic travel has been really strong.”

Sydney Airport chief executive Geoff Culbert last week backed calls to speed up Australia’s slower-than-expected vaccination programs, and said companies and the community need to help make it happen.

“Everyone, not just the government, has a role to play here,” Mr Culbert said. “Whatever tools and levers we have, we should be deploying.”

Sydney Airport has its own vaccination centre, which was initially set up to vaccinate workers interacting with travellers arriving from overseas.

The centre has also offered vaccinations to all airport employees and their families and is in talks with NSW Health over expanding the facility further and becoming a vaccination hub for the local community.

Behaviour economists said a fixed date for opening the border would be more effective at boosting vaccine uptake than a target based on the number of people vaccinated.

If you’ve seen the latest Tourism Australia campaign advertisement featuring Hamish Blake and Zoe Foster Blake, you may be wondering about that astonishing cave that finally silences their “big” exhortations. The landmark that causes their hushed awe is Cathedral Gorge in Purnululu National Park in the Bungle Bungle Ranges, Western Australia.

This extraordinary place, with its instantly recognisable beehive-shaped mounds, was formed over hundreds of millions of years, with tumultuous rains carving out deep gorges. To reach the cavern, visitors walk about 2km from Piccaninny carpark, hemmed in by gorge walls, until the trail enters a huge amphitheatre of red rock, a tranquil pool at its heart. There’s evidence of 20,000 years of Indigenous habitation in the region. The Gija and Jaru people are the traditional custodians of the park, and they conduct cultural tours.

Helicopter is the only way to access Cathedral Gorge in the wet season. Even during the dry, when roads across the arid savanna are more manageable, getting to Purnululu takes some effort; it’s about 12 hours’ drive from Darwin, nine hours from Broome, or 3 ½ hours south from Kununurra. The last 50km takes two to three hours and is 4WD only.

The new TA campaign urges Australians to embark on an epic trip across the country. Cathedral Gorge sounds like a perfect match.

A growing chorus of medical experts, including advisers to federal and state governments, are pressing for a national plan to gradually reopen the international border and adjust quarantine for returned travellers as vaccines are deployed.

Amid frustration from government MPs about the prospect of border closures until mid-2022, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday Australians who were vaccinated would be allowed to travel, first, domestically and eventually overseas.

Jane Halton says it would be prudent to start thinking about opening once the vaccine is rolled out to 70 to 90 per cent of the population.

Mr Morrison declined to put a timeline on the international border reopening to “green” countries, beyond saying it would be “many months” away.

Government adviser on vaccines and hotel quarantine, Jane Halton said the government should now be “scenario planning” to avoid a delay in reopening once the vaccine is rolled out to 70 to 90 per cent of the population.

“It would be prudent to start thinking about scenarios that are able to protect the country while the vaccine is rolled out, in order to ensure we can continue to grow the economy,” Ms Halton said.

“That could include additional quarantine facilities.”

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Sunday the government looked favourably upon plans being developed by NSW and South Australia to bring in more foreign university students, “over and above” the existing caps for Australians returning home.

“They have to be ticked off by the chief medical officer,” Mr Frydenberg said.

University of Melbourne professorial fellow in epidemiology Tony Blakely said the government in the second half of this year could safely open up travel with a small number of low-virus jurisdictions such as China and Taiwan.

“There’s really no reason why we can’t be taking in Chinese students in modified quarantine set up by universities, perhaps for seven days if they clear a test on day five,” Professor Blakely said.

“Epidemiologically, they’d present lower risk to our community than someone coming out of hotel quarantine where they can pick it up in the hotel.”

Barring a new extreme virus variant, Professor Blakely said he hoped borders would be relatively open in 12 months without quarantine from most countries, except high-case nations.

Before then, children needed to be vaccinated, he said.

“If we open up before then it would be pretty ugly because even if kids don’t get seriously ill, they are like a horizontal transmission between all the families.”

“There will be a point some time next year where we pivot and let more people come in more freely and we accept the virus is going to get in.”

“There will be pockets of infection and there will be more morbidity and mortality, but at some time we do need to open up.”

Professor Blakely last year provided modelling to the Victorian government to inform its second lockdown decision.

Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth and Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton both said Australia would need to reopen to the world once most Australians were vaccinated.

Once the population is sufficiently vaccinated we should be opening our borders for those who are vaccinated in a staged and gradual process.

Professor Sutton reportedly said that Australia would ultimately need to “make a call on letting it run”.

Deakin University chair in epidemiology Catherine Bennett said the border closure had “bought time” to build resilience and deploy a vaccine, but Australia needed an “end point”.

A plan to reopen borders would also encourage Australians to get vaccinated, she said.

“We need a much clearer road map out by measuring and managing risk,” Professor Bennett said.

Nick Coatsworth says community needs to get used to the idea we will need to open our international borders. Alex Ellinghausen

“That’s quarantine facilities, home quarantine, it’s duration of quarantine and triaging risk to manage the border.”

The federal government’s strategy is to open the borders in increments, based on health advice.

Mr Morrison said the pandemic response needed to be handled in a series of small steps.

“The next step is to be able to enable Australians who have been vaccinated to firstly travel around Australia” he said.

Mr Morrison said the second step was to allow vaccinated Australians to travel to so-called green countries that have low rates of infection.

He said allowing people to travel to “red zones” – such as India at present – would not only be dangerous but it would complicate efforts to try and get people out of those countries.

Mr Morrison said even if the vaccine program had been rolled out by the end of this year, there would still be millions of children unvaccinated and some unprotected adults who chose not be vaccinated.

There could also be new strains of the virus, he said.

The Liberal MP for the Sydney inner western seat of Reid, Fiona Martin, said her constituents were finding the border closure very difficult.

“Many are separated from immediate family members,” Dr Martin said. “The vaccine rollout is critical.

“Once the population is sufficiently vaccinated we should be opening our borders for those who are vaccinated in a staged and gradual process.”

Other Liberal MPs including Tim Wilson, Dave Sharma, Jason Falinski and Katie Allen pushed for border reopenings in comments reported by Nine newspaper, Sydney’s Sun-Herald, on Sunday.

Dr Coatsworth wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald: “Our entire profession needs to help our community get used to the idea that we will need to open our international borders, and that quarantine must inevitably be modified for vaccinated Australians returning home.”

“It is clear we will not have our borders closed indefinitely, we will not have quarantine stations in perpetuity while we aim for the false idol of eradication, and we need to come to terms with the idea that we cannot, nor do we need to, ride this one out in an eliminationist bunker.

“At a point in the future when a significant majority of our community is vaccinated, there will be pressure to open our borders.

“We must not resist that, in fact, when the time is right, we should be leading the calls for it.”

In private remarks to healthcare workers, reported by The Age, Professor Sutton said that Australia would ultimately need to “make a call on letting it run” once vaccinations have been widely offered.

“We need to somehow communicate to the public that we’ve gotten to a place of complacency because we’ve driven transmission to zero but we will face newly emerging transmission, and a critical juncture where we need to make a call on letting it run,” he said.

“I think that’ll be when we’ve got as high vaccination coverage for the adult population as we can possibly get to, so everyone being offered it, and building that confidence in vaccines as much as we can ... then we need to really say, ‘Look, we can’t sit on our hands here.’

“We all need to step up to get vaccinated in order to open up Australia to world travel and arrivals so that our education sector, tourism sector and all of the other kinds of compassionate reasons for us to see family and friends overseas can come to the fore.”

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said last week Australia must set a deadline for reopening its international border, to avoid the country being “left behind” by the rest of the world.

In March last year, a $5bn a year industry supporting more than 18,000 jobs came to a shuddering halt in Australia. Now, more than a year later, it is still waiting for a pathway to resume its contribution to the travel and tourism economy.

It is increasingly apparent that travel and tourism are being left behind when it comes to the nation’s economic revival. The federal budget assumption that international borders will remain closed until at least mid-2022 is a devastating blow for a beleaguered sector.

It also appears that our sector, cruising, has been pushed further to the back of the queue. We’re unable to get the government to agree on a way forward to the careful restart of domestic cruising; for Australian guests only, and in a local cruise bubble.

Passengers want cruise ships to return. So do suppliers such as farmers, travel agents and entertainers. Regional destinations ships back. We all need a plan and an end to uncertainty. The Tourism and Transport Forum had made a similar call for a plan to address international border closures, only to be bitterly disappointed by the assumptions underpinning the budget.

TTF chief executive Margy Osmond could just as easily have been speaking of cruising when, before the budget, she called out the lack of a plan for reviving the tourism economy. And she now warns it could now be a case of survival for tourism, not merely revival. The lack of certainty, she says, is “devastating”.

“We understand health must be the number one priority. But we need some certainty around dates as far as possible.”

Similarly, without a pathway, there can be no confidence around when cruising will return, irrespective of how many Australians are ultimately vaccinated.

The thousands of Australians with a passion for cruising are entitled to ask why it is taking so long for state and federal authorities to work with the industry to establish such a pathway.

There is ample evidence that domestic cruises, carrying only Australian passengers, with crew who have each passed an extensive quarantine requirement and multiple tests, can responsibly resume, based on the strictest protocols and procedures.

As cruising’s peak industry body, Cruise Lines International Association Australasia (CLIA), is pressing the federal government to finalise the framework for a restart. At the same time, cruise loyalists are increasingly asking why they cannot resume sailing in an Australian cruise bubble.

But it seems not all travel bubbles are equal. Let’s be clear. The cruise industry is not looking for special treatment. Far from it. Our industry just wants to be subject to the same criteria that apply to other industries like aviation. Certainty is essential. Without it, cruise lines cannot finalise operational plans with the states and territories for their ships and crew to re-enter Australia, which in itself is a massively complex undertaking.

With no pathway, the only existing landmark — the biosecurity determination currently set at June 17 — holds only the promise of a further extension, with no viable plan for a domestic cruise bubble. It is just a recipe for further uncertainty. It is reasonable to expect a framework to be finalised before June 17 rolls around.

That the government would be seeking advice on the biosecurity determination date from the same health authorities involved in agreeing the framework for the resumption of domestic cruising also makes the expectation seem entirely reasonable.

CLIA, along with its cruise line members and the Australian Cruise Association, supported by external medical experts, has submitted detailed proposals to state and federal governments on how we believe domestic cruising can resume in Australia. This has included discussions at all levels of government, as well as presentations to the department of health’s Communicable Diseases Network Australia and the Australian Health Protection Plan Committee, which is comprised essentially of federal and state chief medical officers. An industry working group regularly meets with the federal government but we are still no closer to a pathway.

The health and safety of cruise passengers, crew and the destinations they visit are a top priority for CLIA members. Following collaboration with expert health advisers, CLIA’s COVID-19 member policy sets a high bar for initial resumption. We have brought this framework to the table, but still no progress has been achieved.

The policy is a comprehensive prevention, detection and response strategy, from the time a cruise is booked right through to disembarkation. Its core principles involve health protocols, strict measures to allow a carefully phased resumption, domestic cruising only for locals while borders are closed, 100 per cent testing of all passengers and crew before boarding and mandatory testing and quarantine for all crew.

Cruise ships have gradually resumed operating in other parts of the world using protocols like these. Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and parts of Europe have all resumed cruises in tightly controlled circumstances. The UK, Greece, Israel and the Caribbean will soon follow. As of April, more than 400,000 cruise passengers have sailed successfully on more than 400 cruises since July 2020. These sailings have successfully shown the risk of COVID-19 can be mitigated when the right protocols are followed rigorously.

Any crew members entering Australia would be subject to a period of quarantine before leaving originating ports, then a further two- to three-week quarantine at sea en route to Australia, and a further period of quarantine at their entry port in Australia. These exceed the quarantine requirements for airline arrivals.

We understand why federal and state governments and their chief medical officers are risk-averse when it comes to cruises resuming. Their caution is based on Australia’s relative success in keeping the worst effects of the pandemic at bay.

But all that the cruise industry is asking for is for the same leaders and advisers to agree a framework for cruising to resume. To begin with these cruises would limited to Australian residents and have domestic itineraries. We want an opportunity to demonstrate that an Australian cruise bubble can operate responsibly using strict guidelines.

There remains a surprisingly high level of optimism about cruising. Australians are still booking cruises. Every day, they let cruise lines know that they want to cruise again. Many are very close to demanding why their governments are so reluctant to, at the very least, to talk meaningfully about how cruising can return. We need a plan.