Western Australia is vast, and air travel has long been its lifeline with jets spanning the continent, linking Perth to Sydney in hours instead of days.
Regional jets knit together remote towns across the Pilbara and Kimberley, where roads stretch endlessly into desert.
But there has always been one region where air travel has struggled to take root — the short hop south, to Bunbury and Busselton.
On a map, the idea seems almost obvious. Bunbury is the state’s second city, a port and commercial hub while Busselton sits on the edge of Geographe Bay, gateway to the Margaret River region, one of Australia’s most famous wine and tourism destinations.
Both appear to be natural candidates for an air link with Perth.
Yet every attempt to sustain flights has ended the same way: empty seats, cancelled schedules, and silence on the runway.
In the early 1980s, Skywest Airlines operated to Bunbury but by the mid-1980s, Skywest couldn’t justify the run.
The city was simply too close to Perth — about 175 kilometres by road.
Once a passenger factored in the drive to the airport, check-in, waiting for departure, and then onward travel at the Perth end, flying offered no real advantage. And you would have to hire a car on arrival.
For a typical family of four on a holiday it made utterly no sense at all.
And that was when the drive down to Bunbury was a single lane both ways – a nightmare at weekends and holiday time.
Other operators tried to prove the sceptics wrong. Avior Airlines stepped in around 1984, using Piper Chieftains on the route but scrapped it in 1986 as not viable.
That year, Midstate Airlines took over, beginning flights on July 1, 1986.
A year later, the baton passed to Laurie Potter Airlines, which launched its Bunbury link in July 1987.
For a moment, it seemed Bunbury might hold on to its connection.
But when Laurie Potter Airlines collapsed in 1988, so too did the dream of scheduled services. No carrier has returned since.
Busselton, further south, seemed to have better odds. At about 220 kilometres from Perth, the time savings looked more compelling, especially with the pull of Margaret River’s booming tourism.
The first significant attempt came in 1997, when the Western Australian government subsidised flights to Busselton.
Skywest Airlines, Maroomba Airlines, and Skippers Aviation all rotated through the contract, keeping small aircraft flying for four years.
But when the subsidies ended in 2001, so did the service.
A decade later, optimism returned.
In July 2011, Skywest tried again, weaving Busselton into its Perth–Albany route.
For a while, passengers could fly down to Busselton direct or tag through on the way to Albany.
By then, Skywest was transitioning into Virgin Australia Regional Airlines, but the name change couldn’t disguise the reality: load factors remained poor.
In April 2015, the last scheduled flight touched down and the service quietly disappeared.
Problem was the drive to the southwest was now on a dual carriage way for much of the route after the opening of the Forrest Highway in 2009, which bypassed Mandurah a major bottleneck.
Even the national carrier couldn’t make it work.
With great fanfare, QantasLink (Network Aviation) launched a new Perth–Busselton jet service on June 27, 2025.
But within weeks, it was obvious the numbers weren’t there. The F100s carried more empty rows than paying customers.
The service ends on October 8, 2025 – it had lasted just over three months.
But it should be no surprise as the final two links – the Bunbury bypass and the Capel-Busselton widening – to make Perth to Busselton and dual carriage-way have just been completed.
The drive time from Perth to Busselton is just two hours.
The history of these short-lived services is less about failure than inevitability.
Aviation thrives when it saves time, connects distant communities, or creates links impossible by road.
In the South West, the roads are simply way too good, and the distances way too short.
From Skywest’s modest turboprops to QantasLink’s F100s, every operator has arrived with hope and left with losses.
Part of the Bunbury Outer Ring Road – Or Bunbury Bypass.
