Live Departures from Townsville Airport (TSV), Townsville

Townsville Airport (TSV) is the main airport for North Queensland's largest city, sitting about 4km west of the CBD at Garbutt. It is a busy regional capital airport rather than a remote strip, handling well over a million passengers a year, and it serves the wider dry-tropics region as well as travellers heading on to Magnetic Island.

The airfield is a joint civilian and defence facility, shared with RAAF Base Townsville, so military aircraft and the city's large defence presence are part of the everyday picture alongside scheduled passenger flights. Everything runs through one integrated terminal with a small number of aerobridge gates, which keeps the departure experience compact.

The network is domestic. Qantas and Virgin Australia run the trunk routes to the southern capitals on narrowbody jets, Jetstar adds lower-cost capacity on similar city pairs, and QantasLink, Alliance Airlines and Rex cover the heavier regional flying. Brisbane is the workhorse connection, with the other mainland capitals and Cairns filling out the mainline map.

Underneath the jets sits a regional turboprop and small-jet layer that links Townsville to inland Queensland towns and mining centres, the kind of routes the bigger carriers don't fly. There are no scheduled international services; the airport's overseas flights ended some years ago, so long-haul travellers connect through Brisbane.

There is one terminal, with domestic and former-international concourses under the same roof, so check-in and security are straightforward and the walk to the gate is short. Allow the usual buffer for the bag drop and screening queues at peak departure banks, but this is not an airport where you need to arrive hours early.

Getting there is by road. The airport is close enough to the city that a taxi or rideshare run is quick, and there is on-site car parking a short walk from the terminal for anyone driving or being dropped off. There is no rail link and no scheduled public bus to the terminal, so plan on a car, taxi, rideshare or shuttle rather than a regular bus route. The terminal is a regional one, so don't expect a wide spread of lounges or shops beyond the usual domestic offering.