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A grieving Kiwi is stranded in the UK and cannot return to her family because there is no room in managed isolation to accommodate her changed flight.
Jenny Taylor flew to England in late November to see her dying father, but he died while she was in the air.
“I never had my last goodbye,” he said.
Now she just wants to go back to New Zealand to see her husband and daughter, but is instead trapped in south-east England, where a new strain of Covid-19 is rampant and there are severe lockdown restrictions.
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He had a managed isolation facility for Dec. 30, but his plans fell apart when Singapore banned transit from the UK.
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Jenny Taylor and her husband Andy, from whom she has been estranged for six weeks.
An alternate flight home, via Qatar, would have brought her to Auckland six hours later than her original flight, at 5.15am on December 31.
But it’s a day’s difference when it comes to getting started with managed isolation, and Taylor said, “MIQ has said if we can’t get a flight to land on the 30th, that’s not our problem.”
Being told he was a “soul destroyer,” he said.
The next available slot for Managed Isolation is in March.
“I feel completely stranded, without the slightest idea how the hell I’m going to get home,” Taylor said.
He has already been away from home for six weeks because it took him three weeks to get a date for his father’s funeral.
“I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, that I was going home, and then I was surprised to receive the news that I could not travel.”
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Jenny Taylor flew back to the UK to see her dying father, but he passed away before she could say goodbye.
You want the government to do more to help people in your situation who have already reserved managed seclusion spaces.
“If my flight was delayed from Singapore for whatever reason, they would have had to accommodate me. So I can’t understand why they haven’t helped here.
“It’s wrong not to help us.”
For now, Taylor is staying in her friends’ spare rooms. As the list of countries banning flights from the UK grows, he worries about getting stuck.
“My stress levels are through the roof.
“If I don’t get a flight soon, I’m going to have problems.”
A MIQ spokeswoman said that although there were no currently available spaces until March, the chaotic nature of international travel at this time meant that the spaces were available regularly. He said people applying for the emergency isolation allowance would still have to meet an “extremely high” threshold.
A spokeswoman for MBIE said travelers who were unable to arrive on the day they booked should cancel their stay at MIQ.
“We want the kiwis to be able to get home, so if there are people with coupons that they will not use, we ask that they cancel their reservation as soon as possible so that someone else can get home,” he said.
