Departure
87%
vs 95% ▼ 8
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Rottnest Island Airport is a small single-runway airfield serving the popular holiday island of the same name off the coast of Fremantle, Western Australia. It has operated since 1930 and today handles light aircraft services from Jandakot Airport near Perth, making it a short and scenic VFR hop for simulator pilots.
Rottnest Island Airport is a small public airfield operated by the Rottnest Island Authority, serving light aircraft on the holiday island of Rottnest off the Western Australian coast. It handles daily air services, historically from Perth Airport but in recent years mainly from Jandakot, ferrying both workers and holidaymakers to the island. For a simulator pilot the appeal lies in the short, scenic over-water crossing and the compact single-runway layout tucked behind a coastal settlement.
The airfield sits on Rottnest Island, about 800 metres from the main settlement at Thomson Bay and some 19 kilometres northwest of Fremantle, Western Australia. The runway lies behind Thomson Bay and immediately south of Government House Lake, with the Oliver Hill Railway running parallel to it on the southern side.
Rottnest Island Airport has a single physical runway, 09/27, oriented east-west. Runway 09 is 4233 feet long and runway 27 is 3670 feet long; the surface is hard and the runway is lit. Field elevation is 10 feet.
Traffic at Rottnest Island Airport is coordinated on a CTAF of 126 MHz. An FSS frequency of 135.25 MHz is also listed, with Perth Radar noted in the aeronautical data. There is no ILS at the airfield.
The runway lies behind Thomson Bay and just south of Government House Lake, part of which was reclaimed to build the runway; these features, together with the Oliver Hill Railway running parallel to the strip, serve as useful visual landmarks when approaching the island from the mainland.
Rottnest Island Airport opened in November 1930 and has been in regular use since then for private and small commercial operations linking Perth with the island. At one stage the 32-kilometre Perth to Rottnest flight was described as the world's shortest scheduled air route. From around 1948, pioneer aviator Jimmy Woods operated the Perth to Rottnest service through Woods Airways using two war-surplus RAAF Avro Anson aircraft, making more than 13,000 crossings over 14 years before the service closed in 1961 amid safety concerns over the ageing aircraft and friction with the Department of Civil Aviation. Woods Airways and its founder became so closely associated with the airfield that in 1987 the terminal was renamed and reopened as the Jimmy Woods Air Terminal by State Tourism Minister Pam Beggs. MacRobertson Miller Airlines subsequently operated the route using Douglas DC-3 and Fokker F27 aircraft until it became uneconomical, and Rottnest Airlines (also known as Quokka Airlines) ran services until 1999. The airfield has seen two notable accidents: a light twin-engine charter aircraft crashed on the edge of the adjoining salt lake on 12 November 2006 after a suspected engine failure, with all six occupants surviving with minor injuries, and on 7 January 2025 a Cessna 208 seaplane operated by Swan River Seaplanes crashed shortly after takeoff from nearby Thomson Bay, killing the pilot and two passengers.
Since 1999 the Jandakot-based Rottnest Air-Taxi has operated a daily four- and six-seater service to the island, with flying times of around 12 to 15 minutes, alongside seaplane services to Thomson Bay run by Swan River Seaplanes. The airfield recorded around 5,150 take-offs and landings in 2023-24. The runway, taxiway and apron underwent resurfacing works to address drainage and edge maintenance defects, with the airport closed to commercial and public use from 17 July to mid-August 2025 for these essential safety upgrades.