Live Departures from Onslow Airport (ONS), Onslow

Onslow Airport is a small regional strip on the Pilbara coast of Western Australia, a few kilometres south of the town of Onslow and roughly 1,400km north of Perth. The town itself is tiny, well under a thousand permanent residents, and the airport runs at a scale to match: a single sealed main runway, a short gravel cross-strip, and a modest terminal owned and run by the Shire of Ashburton.

Its importance is industrial rather than civic. Onslow is the onshore base for Chevron's Wheatstone LNG project, and the airport works largely as a fly-in fly-out hub for that workforce alongside its scheduled flights. Expect a working regional airport built around resource-sector traffic, not a tourist destination.

The scheduled network is short and simple. QantasLink and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines both run regular flights to Perth, and that Perth link is effectively the whole public timetable. These are standard regional passenger services sized to the route and the runway.

Beyond the scheduled flights, the field carries the traffic you would expect of a Pilbara resource town: FIFO charters tied to the Wheatstone project, private charter and general aviation movements, and Royal Flying Doctor Service flights. On a given day the charter activity can outweigh the scheduled departures.

There is one small terminal, and the departure experience is correspondingly straightforward. Check-in and screening are low-volume and built around a handful of flights a day, so queues are short and the walk from kerb to gate is brief. Don't expect a lounge or airline business facilities here; this is a regional terminal, not a capital-city airport.

Getting to the airport means driving or being driven. It sits just south of Onslow off the main road in, with surface car parking on site and no rail link or public transport network of the kind larger airports have. FIFO passengers are typically bussed in by their employer or charter operator; everyone else arrives by car or taxi.