Both Virgin Australia and Qantas have suspended all domestic and international flights in and out of Melbourne as the plume of volcanic ash has reached southern Australia, more than a week after the volcano's eruption.
Essendon's scheduled flight to depart from Perth for Melbourne at 8pm on Sunday evening has been cancelled, with the Bombers tentatively scheduled on a flight to Melbourne at midday on Monday.
However that likely won't be confirmed until the morning and it will depend on how thick the ash clouds are.
Essendon would have flown into Melbourne for its recovery session and a video review of the match, but coach James Hird wasn't concerned about the drama.
He said his players could do all that they needed to do in Perth, and that the disruption leading into Saturday's clash with North Melbourne would be minimal.
""We are not getting home tonight. We were on a flight at eight o'clock, but now we are here at least until 12 o'clock tomorrow and potentially longer. Hopefully we get on the plane tomorrow, but it's a bit uncertain at the moment as to when we are getting on it,"" Hird said.
""We'll have a different week before we play North Melbourne on Saturday, but the positive is that we'll stay together as a group and lick our wounds. We'll do our review here and probably do our first training session here in Perth at the moment.
""The guys are pretty adaptable and we'll all stay together. If we are here for a day or are here for two days we will work it out. It's not a bad time to spend some time together. It's not ideal, but it's not drastic and we'll work it out.""
For West Australians in the Essendon side such as Paddy Ryder, Ben Howlett, Kyle Hardingham, David Myers, Leroy Jetta, Cale Hooker and Travis Colyer it isn’t necessarily the worst thing either, and Ryder doesn’t think it will affect their preparation for next week.
""My family might come down so I can catch up with them a bit longer, so that would be good,"" Ryder said.
""We have recovery tomorrow and we would have had game review as well, but I'm sure we'll still do all of that and just have a change of location this time.""
