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Remote Far North Queensland Indigenous communities fear losing health and other essential services if airlines continue to cancel flights.
Key points:
- Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire Council mayor says the cancellations are leaving people stranded
- Regional carrier SkyTans says the cancellations are largely due to pilot shortages
- Lawyer Tom Eckersley says he is considering not representing remote clients due to the transport issues
According to the Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire Council, SkyTrans has cancelled 18 flights since the start of this year.
Robbie Sands is the mayor of the western Cape York community and chair of the Torres Cape Indigenous Council Alliance (TCICA), which represents 15 remote local government authorities.
He says flight cancellations happen far too often and are causing significant disruption to the delivery of essential services in some of Queensland's most disadvantaged communities.
"Things like weekly medications sent up from Cairns, they can be delayed or don't come in, which impacts on our peoples' health," Cr Sands said.
"We get a lot of allied health services come into our communities, and [cancellations] cause major disruptions if they can't come in and see and treat our people."
Cr Sands said community members from towns like Kowanyama, Pormpuraaw and Bamaga were being stranded far too often by sudden flight cancellations out of Cairns Airport and struggled to find or afford accommodation.
"To be told in Cairns that there's no flight, what do they do?" Cr Sands said.
"It's very difficult for our people, and it's the other way around for our visiting services.
"It's too risky for a lot of our visiting services to come sometimes because they don't know whether they're going to get home."
Lawyer Tom Eckersley regularly travels to Bamaga, at the tip of Cape York Peninsula, for the remote court circuit.
He said his flights home got cancelled so frequently he was considering pulling the pin on representing his remote clients altogether.
"It's difficult because we have lives to get back to, businesses to get back to," he said.
"We rely on a timetable … and when you get stuck up there for another two or three days, and there's an extremely large impost on you, cost-wise, it makes you think twice."
Mr Eckersley said a recent experience when his return flight on Rex Airlines was cancelled typified the problem.
"We were due to fly out on a Friday morning but were notified by the airline on Thursday that the flight had been moved to 5pm," he said.
"Then on the Friday morning, we were told that flight had also been cancelled, which effectively left us abandoned in Bamaga with no way back to Cairns."
Mr Eckersley said his quickest way home was to book a ferry to Thursday Island in the hope of flying out of Horn Island.
But the earliest available flight was Sunday meaning he was out of pocket hundreds of dollars over that weekend due to the airline's policy of not reimbursing accommodation costs.
Rex Airlines has declined the ABC 's requests to respond to Mr Eckersley's concerns.
Flight cancellations 'an industry-wide problem'
Regional carrier SkyTrans chief executive Alan Milne said he appreciated flight cancellations could cause significant frustration for travellers, but it was not unavoidable when due to "aircraft unserviceability".
"Things do happen in aviation, and our philosophy is that we will not depart if the planes are not 100 per cent [safe to fly], but that is a very rare occurrence," Mr Milne said.
"The majority of the disruptions have been caused by the lack of pilots, and that is an industry-wide issue."
Mr Milne said his airline was looking for solutions and cited SkyTrans' arrangement with Central Queensland University's aviation school for graduate pilots to gain hours and experience with the regional carrier's fleet.
"We're setting up a bit of a pipeline which we hopefully provide some pilots for regional operations up here into the future," he said.
Mr Milne said his airline's policy was to provide accommodation, transport and meal allowances if customers were stranded out of their home port.