Departure
99%
vs 95% ▲ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Cocos (Keeling) Islands Airport sits on West Island in the remote South Keeling Islands, an Australian external territory deep in the Indian Ocean. Its single long runway, a legacy of wartime construction, makes it a striking and historically rich waypoint for any pilot tracking across this part of the world. Today it links the islands to Christmas Island and Perth and is slated for further military development.
Cocos (Keeling) Islands Airport (YPCC/CCK) serves the tiny Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands from West Island, the administrative centre of the group and one of the South Keeling Islands. It is a remote, isolated field surrounded by open ocean, with a single very long runway that reflects its origins as a strategic bomber base and later as a transoceanic refuelling stop. For a simulator pilot it offers an unusual combination of tropical island scenery, a substantial hard runway, and a genuinely out-of-the-way Indian Ocean setting.
The airport lies on West Island, capital of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory situated in the Indian Ocean. Being an isolated island field far from other aerodromes, it operates without nearby controlled airspace or adjoining fields in any meaningful sense for VFR planning; traffic in the area is coordinated through Brisbane Flight Information Service.
The aerodrome has a single physical runway, 15/33, 8009 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit, at a field elevation of 3 feet above sea level. There is no ILS.
Pilots should use the common traffic advisory frequency 118.1 MHz for airfield communications. Flight information in the surrounding airspace is provided by Brisbane FIS on 347.6 MHz.
The airfield was built in 1945 by the Royal Engineers, who felled some 21,900 coconut trees on land owned by the Clunies-Ross family to create two steel-plated airstrips. Three bomber squadrons were based here to strike Japanese targets in Southeast Asia and to support the planned re-invasion of Malaya and reconquest of Singapore, with Supermarine Spitfire Mk VIIIs of No. 136 Squadron RAF the first aircraft to arrive, alongside B-24 Liberators of No. 321 (Netherlands) Squadron RAF flown by exiled Dutch airmen. Qantas Empire Airways used the strip as a refuelling stop for its Avro Lancastrians linking Perth and Ceylon. By 1950 the original steel-plated runways had corroded, and a Qantas Catalina survey flight in May of that year confirmed that locally crushed coral could form a suitable replacement surface. In August 1951 a chartered ship delivered the 2nd Airfield Construction Squadron and 4,000 tons of heavy equipment, and from March 1952 up to 570 personnel built a 10,000 foot runway from crushed coral, completed on 2 July 1952 with both ends sealed to handle Lockheed Constellation aircraft. Qantas began services between Australia and South Africa through the field in September 1952, and South African Airways aircraft flying between Johannesburg and Perth also refuelled here until around 1970.
The airport is operated by Toll Remote Logistics and continues to handle scheduled QantasLink services connecting the islands with Christmas Island and Perth. Under the 2016 Australian Defence White Paper the airfield is planned for upgrading to support Royal Australian Air Force P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, with work intended to begin in the early 2020s and serve as a forward operating base for surveillance and electronic warfare aircraft in the region, though the project has seen substantial cost increases.