Direct weekly flights for Hedland

DIRECT airline access to the Pilbara from the eastern states was introduced last week, with Brisbane-based Strategic Airlines announcing two new services jetting off in August.

From August 3, Strategic says it will fly between Brisbane and Port Hedland each Tuesday and relaunch weekly return services between Melbourne and Port Hedland.

Strategic Airlines head of commercial, Damien Vasta, said the airline had developed solid working relationships with the Town of Port Hedland, local resource companies and the community to ensure that the booming mining region continued to prosper.

“From our perspective this is an opportunity to create a connection that doesn’t otherwise exist,” he said.

“Our commercial business is in its infancy so we hope to increase services with more announcements and more connections between the east coast and the Pilbara.”

Qantas is the only competitor to Strategic servicing the Pilbara from the east coast, currently operating a Sydney-Melbourne-Karratha service, although Mr Vasta said he didn’t think Qantas would follow suit with a direct service to the Pilbara.

“Simply because we’ve been working exclusively with the Hedland town council about offering these services for some time, and we’ve been able to acquire the support from the community to allow us some level of comfort that the service is a long-term proposition,” he said.

In February, Strategic (which also operates the only protected regulated air route between Perth and Derby) became the first to offer the 180-seat Airbus A320 service to WA miners, which will also be used on the Port Hedland services.