Air New Zealand is doing a lot of the heavy lifting as New Zealanders look to bail out of Australia within the seven-day exit window, and the race is already underway.
There are no flights out of Sydney for New Zealand now, Air NZ chief executive Greg Foran confirmed to Lisa Owen.
"Unfortunately passengers do have to do 14 days when they come back. So we are a little bit hamstrung on availability based MIQ spots and my understanding is that any flights that were put on there have immediately sold out," he said.
"As of about two hours ago we still had about 4000 seats available on flights that were operating out of Australia, over the next week. However, when you get into the details of that, Melbourne, there was a rush, and we've already put on a Dreamliner coming out of there on Monday and another one on Tuesday.
"So literally, as each hour goes by, we're going to be reviewing what we're seeing coming through from customers, continuing to chat with the government about what we're seeing and where it's necessary, we'll get on and put on extra flights, based on what we're seeing across Australia.
