By Adrian Black
Qantas is re-routing its longest flight to avoid dangerous airspace amid fears of an imminent Iranian attack on Israel.
The airline’s QF9 service from Perth to London will stop to refuel in Singapore, but the return flight (QF10) will be unaffected due to prevailing winds.
“We’re temporarily adjusting the flight paths for our flights between Perth and London due to the situation in parts of the Middle East,” a Qantas spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.
Fears of an Iranian strike on Israel have been mounting, after Israel bombed an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on April 1, killing a top general and six other military officers.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the strike tantamount to an attack on Iranian soil and said Israel “must be punished, and it shall be”.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said on Friday she had spoken with Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and urged his nation to “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation”.
The Qantas spokeswoman told AAP reports the airline had paused or cancelled flights were incorrect.
“We’ll reach out to customers directly if there’s any change to their booking,” she said.
QF9 will operate as QF209 due to the adjusted flight path, and the airline will monitor the situation in the coming days for any further route adjustments.
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![Teacher Vanessa Jones has been living in Higgins since 2001, and while she loves the area, she says she is “fed up” with the neglectful ACT government.
The Higgins shops have been completely abandoned, says Vanessa, preventing the opportunity for residents to have a community-centred space to socialise.
They only received bins nine months ago, she says, and requests for a water station and repairs to the bus station have gone unanswered.
“It’s very, very slow,” says Vanessa.
“I asked for the zebra crossing on Fullagar [Crescent] to be repainted, and we had to wait about six or nine months.
“That’s just such a long time… we pay a lot of rates.”
Vanessa says assistance from the government only seems to go to communities with time-rich and assertive communities, leaving places such as Higgins, where the majority of households have both adults working full-time and English may not be the first language of the family, at an automatic disadvantage.
“If you’ve got two people working, paying a mortgage, raising two or three kids, they don’t have the time,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.
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