Exodus of Fly-in Fly-out (FIFO) Workers Brings Extra Flights to Central Queensland Airports

In the days leading up to Christmas Day, there were several additional flights in and out of some Central Queensland airports - we've already highlighted two such occurrences - at Thangool / Biloela Airport (HERE) and at Mackay Airport (HERE).

At my local, Clermont Aerodrome, several extra Skytrans Airlines Dash-8 charters were noted passing through.  On Monday 24 December, there were six flights that flew between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and onto Clermont.  Dash-8-100 VH-QQK is shown below preparing for departure to Brisbane as SKP863 to the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane.

At Emerald Airport, Saturday 22 December saw two additional Alliance Airlines operated flights touch down from Brisbane.  Fokker F-100 VH-XWN was noted operating as UTY410/411/412/413.  These flights were in addition to Alliance Airlines F-100 VH-XWQ operating the 'usual' Saturday morning flights to Emerald on behalf of QantasLink.

Skytrans also operated two additional FIFO charter flights between Brisbane and Emerald on behalf of AERgO, with Dash-8-100 VH-QQJ noted flying as SKP714/715 and Dash-8-300 VH-QQP noted flying as SKP712/713 on Monday 24 December.  Interesting that have been no extra SAAB 340 flights!

Probably the busiest airport though seemed to be Moranbah Airport where over the five days leading up to Christmas Day, there were as many as 48 QantasLink operated Dash-8 flights from and back to Brisbane.  Of these, at least 20 were believed to be FIFO charter flights.

There were also three additional flights to Moranbah from Townsville operated by Virgin Australia (Skywest Airlines) ATR 72-500/600 aircraft.