When I moved back to my country home town after almost 25 years of living in Sydney and London, I knew things would be different. Apart from missing friends in the big smoke, I could no longer get from my front door to an international airport in half an hour, which for a travel writer was a handy thing to be able to do.
While the upsides of life in the northern New South Wales town of Glen Innes far outweigh the extra travel time and expense, at times I do wonder just how many days – or rather weeks – of my life I’ve now lost travelling those extra miles.
Up here in the New England highlands, the Glen Innes airport hasn’t seen a commercial plane for about 15 years. So if I want to fly to Sydney I need to go through Armidale, which takes roughly four hours after factoring in driving time, airport time and flight time.
Flying used to be my default mode of transport to Sydney but in the past few years I’ve been driving instead. Sure, it takes seven hours and petrol is expensive but it’s still a lot cheaper than flying.
Like on so many routes around Australia and the world, air fares between Armidale and Sydney have been steadily working their way up. One-way QantasLink flights now start at $212, while Rex has flights from $149, along with a Jetstar-style total carry-on weight (so that’s your carry-on and personal item) of 7kg, meaning it could cost more at the gate.
The last train pulled into Glen Innes in 1988 but there is the option of getting a coach to Armidale and the train the rest of the way for about a quarter of the price of a Qantas flight – and 10 hours of your time.
That means travelling to Sydney for a one-day event requires two nights of accommodation.
And yet I live in hope of better regional transport routes and keep my eyes on positive glimmers on the horizon.
In the 2019-20 federal budget the government committed $100m to competitive grants in the Regional Airports Program to be shared over four years. So far, approved grants have included $6.6m for Bega Valley shire’s Merimbula airport, $5m for the Ballarat airport and, up in my corner of state, $1.5m for Armidale airport and almost $500,000 for Inverell airport.
The money is being used on a range of upgrades, including extending and strengthening runways so larger planes can land, installing new LED runway lighting systems to improve safety and allow flights to operate in low-visibility weather and building aircrew rest facilities.
Armidale’s latest cash injection comes after a $10m upgrade in 2017 that helped build a new terminal complete with a baggage belt (no more collecting bags off the back of a trolley for us!) and cafe area. Now we just need someone to run the shuttered cafe so we’re not left waiting for our caffeine and snack fix on the plane.
Since the start of the pandemic Qantas has added more than 50 new routes, including 38 regional QantasLink services. The QantasLink CEO, John Gissing, has credited both the surge in domestic tourism and growth of economic and industrial hubs in regional communities for the new flights.
Rex has increased services in 11 regional cities, but has also dropped six regional centres, leaving Grafton and Lismore without any scheduled flights. It’s a win-or-lose time depending on where you live.
In Inverell, 50 minutes west of Glen Innes, the tiny airport is serviced by the regional airline Link Airways. A few years ago when I flew with Link to Brisbane, it involved a stop in Moree on a Metro 23 plane that carries up to 19 people with a one-one seat configuration. Now the same plane flies directly to Brisbane and since 2019 has been flying via Narrabri to Sydney too.
Other new Link Airways routes include Canberra to Coffs Harbour and as of August Link passengers can earn Velocity points to be used on Virgin flights, with plans to expand the program so points can be used on Link flights too.
Meanwhile, the long-announced regional airline Bonza is still waiting for regulatory approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. If all goes well, they are planning to fly Shazza, Bazza and Sheila (these are the names of the planes, although sometimes it could also be the passengers) on lots of new routes, including Tamworth to Melbourne and Coffs Harbour to the Sunshine Coast.
As for my home town, we are waiting to find out if there is any joy in the latest round of Regional Airports Programs grants and the council has been working on a new airport master plan that could see smaller commercial aircraft coming back to Glen Innes.
Hopefully, as more tree changers embrace country living and bring with them expectations of being able to fly to a capital city, the airlines will respond. Until then I’ll be catching up on my podcasts on the long seven-hour drive.
