The flight, which originates in Melbourne, normally operates non-stop from Perth to Heathrow, but will be unable to do so when Qantas resumes international services from 18 December if Covid restrictions are still in place in Western Australia.

Talks are under way to operate the service non-stop from Darwin in Northern Territory instead.

Qantas said: “The discussions for what would be a daily Melbourne-Darwin-London service focus on the logistics of domestic and international transit under the current Northern Territory government Plan for Covid Management.

“If this service can’t operate through Darwin, it will instead fly Melbourne-Singapore-London until at least April 2022. A decision on the exact routing is likely to be made within the next two weeks.”

The airline’s chief executive Alan Joyce added: “At this stage, Western Australia doesn’t intend to open to international travel until sometime next year, so we’ll unfortunately have to temporarily move our Perth-London service until at least April 2022. 

“Instead of operating from Melbourne to Perth and then on to London as it usually does, this flight will operate from Melbourne to London via either Darwin or Singapore, depending on conversations we’re having with the NT in the coming weeks.

“We look forward to operating this flight via Perth again when circumstances allow.”

Other changes include delaying the restart of domestic flights between Western Australia and Victoria and New South Wales until 1 February 2022, again due to border restrictions.

“Based on our discussions with Western Australia we know their borders won’t be open to New South Wales and Victoria until early next year, so we’ve sadly had to cancel the flying we had planned on those routes in the lead-up to Christmas,” said Joyce.