Live Departures from Broome International Airport (BME), Broome

Broome International Airport (BME) is the regional hub for the Kimberley, the far northwest corner of Western Australia. It sits on the edge of town, close enough that the drive in rarely takes more than a few minutes, and it handles most of the air traffic for a region that is otherwise a very long way from anywhere by road.

Its character is firmly that of a holiday airport. Broome empties and fills with the seasons: the dry season from roughly April to September brings the crowds heading for Cable Beach, the Horizontal Falls and Kimberley cruises, and the schedule swells to match before easing back in the wet. The "International" in the name is largely historical at the moment. The terminal has customs and immigration facilities and has taken seasonal overseas flights in the past, but the current network is domestic.

The backbone is the Perth run. Qantas, QantasLink and Virgin Australia carry the trunk traffic down to the state capital on narrowbody jets, and in the peak dry season Qantas adds seasonal east-coast services for the holiday market. This is where most of the seats are.

Around that sits the regional network. Airnorth and Nexus Airlines connect Broome with other regional centres across the Kimberley and Western Australia, and Skippers Aviation runs the smaller turboprop and charter work out to remote strips. The mix leans towards leisure travel rather than the fly-in-fly-out resource traffic that defines airports further down the Pilbara coast.

There is one terminal, low-set and built in a local style, and it handles everything from the Perth jets to the regional turboprops. Getting there is the easy part: the airport is on the edge of town, so a taxi from the centre is a short, cheap trip, and there are short- and long-term car parks a few steps from the doors. There is no rail link and no need for one at this scale; most people drive, take a cab or use a hotel or tour transfer.

The departure experience is straightforward and small in pace. Check-in and security are quick by big-city standards, and the terminal is a single space rather than a maze of piers and gates. Don't expect a paid or airline lounge here; the offering is the usual café and small retail, so plan to do your waiting in the main hall. In the busy dry-season months the place gets noticeably fuller, so leaving a little more time is sensible when the tourist traffic is at its height.