Comes Christmas, it may be cheaper to go and visit friends and relatives in London than flying from Sydney to Perth “provided the state opens its border”. 

Australians look set to have good value overseas flights in coming months but may pay more for regional travel when Covid lockdown restrictions are eased.

Qantas is now taking bookings for international flights before they resume in mid-December with Sydney to Singapore among the first to be available, assuming the international border opens.

The federal government is yet to repeal the March 2020 ban on travelling overseas for a holiday but Qantas is confident 80 per cent of the working age and adult population will be fully vaccinated before Christmas.

The Covid pandemic has seen Qantas cement its market share, to the point it had 74 per cent of the domestic market by March 2021 as its key rival Virgin Australia struggled to survive.

Australians look set to have good value overseas flights but may pay more for regional travel when Covid restrictions are eased

Qantas, however, isn’t nearly as dominant in the international space with Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand and British Airways set to provide plenty of competition.

From the end of 2020, after Melbourne emerged from its big lockdown, Qantas offered discount domestic airfares to lure travellers, before prices went up again.

Qantas announced on Thursday that from mid-December, it would commence some international services from Australia to first-world destinations with high vaccination rates

The resumption of international flights is also based on National Cabinet scrapping caps on returning Australian travellers who are fully vaccinated.