Airnorth Starts Toowoomba-Melbourne Service

15th Mar 2016

Regional Australian airline Airnorth started on Monday regular public transport (RPT) from Brisbane West Wellcamp in Toowoomba to Melbourne Tullamarine.

The airline will operate daily flights between Toowoomba and Melbourne. The service, as well as the one between Toowoomba and Cairns, which will go three times per week are both supported through a codeshare deal with Qantas Airways.

The first flight connecting the two destinations took off from Wellcamp Airport a little after 7:15 in the morning on Monday and landed after approximately two hours at Tullamarine Airport as flight TL130. The returning flight, TL131, departed from Melbourne and back to Toowoomba at around 10:15 AM.

Airnorth will be using Embraer E170 VH-ANT aircraft on the route, which has a 76-seat capacity.

Airnorth Head of Flight Operations and CEO Fly the Inaugural Toowoomba-Melbourne Flight

Airnorth is one of the first carriers to fly passengers from the newly built airport in Toowoomba in South-East Queensland as of this Friday.

The inaugural flight between Toowoomba and Melbourne, Tullamarine Airport was operated by Airnorth pilot and General Manager of Flight Operations Dean Hamm.

Hamm, who was born in Melbourne, and has 18 years of experience working for Airnorth, said about the flight:

"It has been an amazing experience to see the company expand right across Northern Australia and now to be part of the first flight into Victoria. Airnorth has always looked after its people. It likes to recruit locally and give its employees the chance to grow."

Mr Hamm is one of the more experience pilots at Airnorth. He has more than 10,000 logged flight hours, 5,000 of which were on the Embraer 170 that the airline is using for this route.

The head of flight operations at the regional airline was joined for this flight by Airnorth CEO Daniel Bowden, as well as 40 other passengers.

After the plane landed successfully on tarmac in Melbourne, Bowden said:

"This is an important milestone for our business and for regional Australia. As Australia's second longest operating airline, we know that quality air services are critical for building communities and bringing them closer to domestic and international markets."