International travellers flying into Sydney are being warned their flights may be cancelled after strict caps were introduced by the NSW Government.
Sydney International Airport was eerily quiet this morning, after the airport introduced a cap of just 450 passengers allowed in each day.
Traffic at the country’s busiest international airport is now at just one per cent of pre-pandemic levels, when daily inbound and outbound passengers averaged more than 45,000 a day.
The two-week cap also limits individual flights to a maximum of 50 people.
The move comes as a fresh blow for the aviation sector, which is buckling under the strain of four months of international and domestic travel bans and stay-at-home orders, prompting Virgin Australia to enter voluntary administration and Qantas to sack thousands of staff.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade introduced the new caps as Sydney struggles to cope with an influx in its hotel quarantine system.
The decision has prompted some backlash from would-be travellers on social media, some labelling the move “absurd” while others scrambled to find out whether their incoming flights were still operating.
Others called on the federal government to step in to distribute the load on hotel quarantine more evenly around Australia, which is now falling disproportionally on NSW.
The state has seen 32,036 travellers enter quarantine to date, with more than 5,000 people still in mandatory detention in 22 hotels around Sydney on Friday.
Queensland has begun charging travellers for their own mandatory quarantine, prompting some arrivals to choose instead to head to NSW for their quarantine before returning home, according to NSW Health.
Source: 9News
