Jake Nelson

The upgrades, expected to begin early this year, will allow the airport to handle larger aircraft such as QantasLink Dash 8 Q400s. Burnie is currently served by QantasLink, Rex, and Sharp Airlines flights.

The airport in northern Tasmania saw 159,032 passengers in January 2025, while 2 January was its busiest-ever day with 6,114 passengers, the first time it had handled more than 6,000 passengers in a single day. It comes after 2024 was Launceston’s best calendar year on record.

In its latest Domestic Airline Competition report, the consumer watchdog found flights on services between metropolitan cities were 90.4 per cent full in November 2024, the highest since January 2019, when the ACCC’s data began.

ACL manages slots at 75 airports around the world, such as London Heathrow and Dubai, and is owned by a consortium including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and easyJet. It will replace Airport Coordination Australia (ACA), which has handled Sydney’s slots for the past quarter century.

The codeshare will see Air India, which operates daily Dreamliner flights from Delhi to Sydney and Melbourne, add its code to Virgin flights allowing onward connections to 16 cities across Australia and New Zealand.

The competition and consumer watchdog, which granted an interim authorisation to the deal last year that has allowed Virgin and Qatar Airways to sell tickets on the flights, believes the arrangement is “likely to result in public benefits and is unlikely to result in any public detriment”.