Blog Posts

We recently sent Ellie, our Marketing Officer, on the CA921 as far as Warburton, before hopping on the CA901 back to Alice Springs, here’s what she discovered in her latest piece for the internal newsletter:

Today I am so excited to be flying on one of our aircraft from Alice Springs down to Warburton, just across the WA border (well, I guess 300 km is “just” across the border!) as part of our RASS Region 9 service. Region 9 is one of our biggest RASS runs and, perhaps the most challenging because of the vast distances involved and the volume of stuff we carry.

Once I had confirmed I didn’t need my passport, I lent a hand to the Alice Springs ground team who were checking the freight to be loaded onto the aircraft – and boy was there a lot of it!

Region 9 involves six flights a week and two C208 Caravans. I’m not sure why it is called the “Tri-State Region” as we don’t land in South Australia. Mind you Wingellina is right on the border of WA, NT and SA – close enough!

One of the main differences with Region 9 and our other RASS services is that one of the aircraft is dispatched to Kalgoorlie on Tuesday where it operates three flights in WA before heading back to Alice Springs on the Friday. Chartair has been operating these routes since about 2006 and has a “temporary” base in Kalgoorlie. During the height of COVID, when the WA border was firmly shut, we permanently relocated aircraft and crew to Kalgoorlie to ensure that the services could continue despite all the challenges and restrictions. Driving between Alice Springs and Kalgoorlie would take more than 26 hours across almost 2,000 km of unforgiving dirt roads – I think I’ll stick to flying!

One of the best parts of this trip was flying over a couple of little rock formations in the far southwest of the NT.

First stop was Wingellina, or Irrunytju. A small Indigenous community of about 160 people, established in the 1980s located about 12 km from the junction of the WA-NT-SA borders – guess that’s why it’s called Tri-State! Interestingly, Wingellina is located in the electorate of O’Conner, which at 868,576 km2 is one of the largest electoral constituencies in the world! Thank you, Wikipedia!

For Chartair, we are an essential lifeline for the community delivering heaps of mail, freight for the local store and essential medical stuff including vaccines.

After a quick stop in Jameson, we landed in Warburton.

Located 1,050 km southwest of Alice Springs and 750 km northeast of Kalgoorlie, Warburton is roughly the halfway point for today’s flight. With a population of about 600 people, Warburton is one of the biggest Aboriginal communities we serve and boasts a community store, health clinic, open air swimming pool, sports field, gallery and coffee shop and a roadhouse! Warburton is the only sealed runway outside of the main centres we fly to, and at 1,600m long is pretty impressive considering there’s a whole lot of nothing in the surrounding landscape!

After dropping off most of our payload at Warburton, it was time to load up with the essential items that were heading back to Alice Springs – including eskies full of pathology samples.

For me, who spends most of my time in head office, this was a great experience and a real insight to the work we do and how valued it is by the communities we serve. It really made me appreciate the huge amount of work that is involved in making just one flight go smoothly – there are dozens of moving parts, and it takes an amazing team effort from everyone at Chartair to make it happen.

Anyway, time for me to recline this seat and snooze all the way to Alice Springs. Keep it smooth, Arley.

Safe flying.

Ellie