British Airways (BA) stopped selling flight tickets from London to Sydney until an unspecified time in 2021. The optimistic hope to resume the international route was shattered after the governments of the UK and Australia imposed the COVID-19 related travel bans.

According to an official British air carrier website, BA removed the London-Sydney route at least until January 2021. The airline also stopped selling tickets for 50 more international destinations until December 2020. The decision to repeatedly suspend the Australian destination was made after the Parliament of the United Kingdom began its second nationwide lockdown.

Speaking to local media, Mark Muren, the Head of Global Sales of BA, said that the airline terminated the London-Sydney route following the country’s decision to put a ban on outbound international leisure travel. 

Muren explained that to ensure flexibility for its passengers, following standard customer guidelines, BA would entitle the customers a refund for the canceled flight. BA would also provide the passengers either an ability to change flight date or destination or offer a voucher for future travel. 

The airline already halted its key Asia-Pacific destinations, including Sydney, once in April 2020. At the time, BA scrubbed Sydney from its schedule due to Australian international travel restrictions under which all arriving passengers were required to follow a mandatory two-week-long quarantine. Initially, the British air carrier hoped to resume the route at the end of October 2020.

One of the newest aircraft in BA fleet, the Airbus A380 that had been used to handle the airline’s long-haul operations, is also expected to stay grounded until 2021 when the government of the UK would lift up the recently implemented travel restrictions, according to Muren. BA has a total of 12 A380 jets, all of which are currently parked, palnespotters.com data indicates.