[Update: Some Of] American’s Sydney Flights Will Become One-Way Only Starting July 12

by Gary Leff

Update: An American Airlines spokesperson shares,

The communication was shared before it was reviewed and approved. It was recalled and correct information is being shared with team members today.

We now know the dates in July and August where customer flights will be converted to cargo-only flights:

  • July 12, 16, 17, 19, 22, 26, 28 and 31
  • August 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 22, 24, 26 and 27

These dates will be loaded in this weekend’s schedule update. Just like any schedule change, we’ll reach out to customers scheduled to travel on the affected flights to offer alternate arrangements.

Australia has cut in half the number of passengers who are allowed to enter the country each day. As it stands Australia is open almost exclusively to its own residents, and they have to go into state quarantine on arrival. It’s these quarantine slots that have become even more scarce.

  • July 14 – August 31, caps are cut in half
  • Only 456 people are allowed into the country per day
  • Of those, 215 are permitted to arrive in Sydney

Past outbreaks in the country have been linked to passengers arriving and going into quarantine. And to sex.

American Airlines will no longer be operating a passenger flight Los Angeles to Sydney starting July 12th (arriving the morning of July 14). They will, however, continue flying Sydney – Los Angeles, as noted by aviation watchdog JonNYC.

The airline will fly crew to Sydney so they have people there to operate flights back to the states. It is cargo-only down, passengers and cargo coming back.

It’s difficult to get a flight to Australia because of the limited number of slots. Airlines continue operating, mostly with cargo. 35,000 Australians have registered with the government, wanting to return home.

While Sydney flights are expensive because there’s more demand than supply, once on board it’s the easiest upgrade ever. There are often more premium seats than passengers, or spread out and have a whole section of economy to yourself.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Idiots. All they’re doing is delaying the inevitable and prolonging the suffering of their citizens. Lockdowns don’t work. How many failed attempts will SE Asia go through to prove this?

  2. In the early months of the pandemic, I envied Australians because of their low COVID numbers. Now I’d much rather be a vaccinated American, free to live life, rather than an unvaccinated Australian stuck in apparently never ending COVID restrictions with no exit plan.

  3. Those F/As get a bunch of hours for sitting and just watching cargo. No obnoxious pax to deal with. Not a bad LOF for a senior mama.

  4. Effective June 29, Argentina is restricting both international flights and pax. 600 arriving pax maximum per day. The airline most affected is AA. Would be interested to know how AA is handling this internally, particularly who to bump and who to allow.

  5. So the flights are not one way. They are one way for passengers only. Misleading heading (which is not a surprise).

  6. AA is actually denying this is accurate (for the time being). No official announcement from them as yet. I’m sure they just haven’t made an official announcement yet but it sure would be nice of them to let those with flights in the coming days know what is going on.

  8. @James The UK’s COVID transmission history would appear to disagree with your assertion that “lockdowns don’t work”. Of course, if you can’t vaccinate your population while locking it down, the lockdown is, as you say, “delaying the inevitable”.

  10. Lol @ politicians using lockdowns 20 months after this all started.

    All the data is in, and the correlation with lockdowns and preventing deaths is close to zero.
    When you figure in the collateral damage done to people and society, it’s hard hard hard negative.

    And the people LOVE it.
    That’s the strangest thing, they beg for restrictions and demand ‘safety’ at any cost.

    Proud to have hit 40 countries in the last 1.5 years. Traveling freely during these times has allowed us to miss all the non-sense, and live our lives.

    Sad what happened to most people :/

  11. Down in Australia the restrictions have enormous 85%+ support. Economically it’s been great and intentional tourism has been replaced by domestic tourism. Most of the pandemic we have no internal restrictions and everything operates like there’s no covid. Lockdowns work. NZ, Aus and ironically China all run on this model and it means that we haven’t had any deaths this year and only a tiny fraction of the deaths the US and UK has and mostly far less restrictions. I’d rather live here where they actually take the virus seriously than anywhere else.

  12. @George

    Not sure what your sources are for lockdowns having zero correlation with fewer deaths, and it somewhat depends on exactly what you mean when you say “lockdown”, but a couple studies have found that measures such as restricting group gatherings, closing schools, and border closures resulted in a reduction in Rt and also correlated with higher recovery rates (suspected due to less burdened health systems).

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext

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