A 'Rush Hour' of Jets Call into Gladstone Airport Thursday Afternoon

Certainly a busy afternoon at Gladstone Airport on Thursday 1 January with four jets touching down in the industrial city in quick succession - and local plane spotter Anthony S was on hand to capture some of the action!

Perhaps the star arrival - again - was QantasLink (Cobham Aviation) Boeing B717-200 VH-YQT which looked to be operating a late-afternoon Fly-in Fly-out (FIFO) charter flight from Sydney to Gladstone as QJE1960.

VH-YQT also operated FIFO charters out of Gladstone before Christmas, and as mentioned, this particular B717 is one of five in a 2-class configuration with 110 seats, along with Q-Streaming - Qantas' wireless entertainment system.  VH-YQT then departed back to Sydney as QJE6201.

Earlier, another QantasLink B717-200 looked to touch down from Brisbane on a FIFO charter flight late on Thursday 1 January with VH-NXG arriving as QJE1958.

It departed a little later on the scheduled QJE1717 service back to Brisbane.

It also appeared that on Tuesday 30 December and Wednesday 31 December, QantasLink Dash-8-Q400 Next Gen VH-LQQ and B717-200s VH-NXD and VH-NXG also operated various FIFO charters to and from Gladstone from Brisbane.

QantasLink (Cobham Aviation) Boeing B717-200 VH-NXJ was also spotted by Anthony departing Gladstone on the QJE1713 scheduled service to Brisbane.

Another nice visitor was Virgin Australia Embraer E-190 VH-ZPA which operated the VOZ1717/1720 scheduled service from and back to Brisbane.

And JetGo Australia Embraer E-135 VH-JGB was also captured operating the scheduled JG78/79 service from and back to Sydney.

Sincere thanks to Anthony for taking the time to capture these great photos and for allowing us to share them!

All photos taken by Anthony Schulz  ©