Mount Isa Airport is an

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

serving the western

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...

city of

Mount Isa Mount Isa ( ) is a city in the Gulf Country region of Queensland, Australia. It came into existence because of the vast mineral deposits found in the area. Mount Isa Mines (MIM) is one of the most productive single mines in world history, base ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

. It is served by a variety of scheduled regional airlines, with flights to

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

Townsville Townsville is a city on the north-eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. With a population of 180,820 as of June 2018, it is the largest settlement in North Queensland; it is unofficially considered its capital. Estimated resident population, 3 ...

and

Cairns Cairns (, ) is a city in Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. The population in June 2019 was 153,952, having grown on average 1.02% annually over the preceding five years. The city is the 5th-most-p ...

as well as several other regional centres. The

Royal Flying Doctor Service The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an air medical service in Australia. It is a non-profit organisation that provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote an ...

has one of its nine Queensland bases at Mount Isa Airport. Since 2005 the airport has been owned by Queensland Airports Limited, which also owns

Townsville Airport Townsville Airport is a major Australian regional airport that services the city of Townsville, Queensland. The airport is also known as Townsville International Airport, and Garbutt Airport, a reference to its location in the Townsville sub ...

Longreach Airport Longreach Airport is situated in Longreach, Queensland, Australia. The airport is northeast of the city. The Royal Flying Doctor Service has one of its nine Queensland bases at Longreach Airport. History Longreach has played a major part ...

and

Gold Coast Airport Gold Coast Airport (formerly known as Coolangatta Airport) is an international Australian airport located at the southern end of the Gold Coast and approximately south of centre of Brisbane, within South East Queensland agglomeration. Th ...

. In the 2010–11

financial year A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...

, Mount Isa Airport handled 217,525 passengers, a 25.1% increase over the previous year. In 2019, the airport was a base for relief efforts for the North West Queensland floods.

Facilities

The airport resides at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § ...

of above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardis ...

. It has one

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete ...

designated 16/34 with an

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

surface measuring and is north of the city

Airlines and destinations

Statistics

Mount Isa Airport was ranked 30th in Australia for the number of

revenue passenger A passenger (also abbreviated as pax) is a person who travels in a vehicle, but does not bear any responsibility for the tasks required for that vehicle to arrive at its destination or otherwise operate the vehicle, and is not a steward. The ...

s served in financial year 2010–2011.

Fiscal year A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...

1 July – 30 June Refers to "Regular Public Transport (RPT) operations only"

Accidents and incidents

On 22 September 1966 a

Vickers Viscount The Vickers Viscount is a British medium-range turboprop airliner first flown in 1948 by Vickers-Armstrongs. A design requirement from the Brabazon Committee, it entered service in 1953 and was the first turboprop-powered airliner. The Vi ...

aircraft departed from Mount Isa Airport with twenty passengers for a flight to Brisbane via

Longreach Longreach is a town and a locality in the Longreach Region, Queensland, Australia. It is the administrative centre of the Longreach Regional Council, which was established in 2008 as a merger of the former Longreach, Ilfracombe, and Isisford ...

. Forty-four minutes after takeoff a fire started in one of the

engines An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power g ...

. The crew were unable to extinguish the fire or

feather Feathers are epidermal growths that form a distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on both avian (bird) and some non-avian dinosaurs and other archosaurs. They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates and a premie ...

the

propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

so made an emergency descent with the intention of landing at Winton, a town south-east of Mount Isa. The fire spread to the fuel tank and weakened the wing structure so that a large part of the

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album '' Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * ...

wing broke away. The aircraft crashed west of Winton. All on board were killed. It remains the fifth-worst accident in Australia's civil aviation history.Ten Worst Aircraft Crashes in Australia
. Retrieved 2011-08-25

References

External links