Passengers will be able to fly directly from Canberra to Byron Bay, with Canberra Airport expanding its operations to include flights into northern NSW.
With Queensland closed to outsiders, the airport has decided to switch its focus to just south of the reclusive state.
Flights to Ballina, Byron Bay and Tweed Heads will begin from July 3.
It's the latest effort by Canberra Airport's owners to get more people flying.
So far, it has proposed:
- A "trans-Tasman bubble", with flights between Canberra and Wellington, on the reasoning both capitals are free of the virus;
- Creating an Adelaide-Hobart-Canberra "bubble", allowing flights to South Australia and Tasmania without the need for quarantine at the destination.
It has increased flights to Sydney and Melbourne but hit a barrier with its other proposals.
Head of aviation Michael Thomson said Fly Pelican tickets to the northern NSW destinations would start at $229 one-way.
"After months of disruption to the aviation and tourism industry, the Canberra to Ballina flight link will bring a much-needed boost to the local economies of both our regions," Mr Thomson said.
He said things at the airport were slowly getting back to normal.
With the virus lockdown across Australia, flights were cut so that on some days nobody flew, and on other days only 12 passengers took off - compared with 9000 passengers a day before the virus struck.
Flights are now up to about 100 passengers which, given the restrictions on people not sitting next to each other, is probably the maximum.
In recent weeks, only people on essential trips were allowed but with the governments of Victoria and NSW easing regulations, the airport said everybody could fly for non-essential trips like tourism.
READ MORE:
- Canberra Airport to increase flights as lockdown eases
- Canberra Airport asks Border Force to designate it as a COVID-19 'green zone'
- Canberra-Adelaide-Hobart 'travel bubble' in the works, Barr says
Separately in the aviation world, Wing, the company operating delivery drones in parts of Canberra, says demand has gone through the roof with the coronavirus lockdown.
"Wing currently serves hundreds of customers in the suburbs of Crace, Palmerston, Franklin, and Harrison from Wing's delivery facility in Mitchell," a spokeswoman said.
"With Canberrans encouraged to stay home during COVID-19, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of customers using the service."
It's now expanded the service to Brisbane and from Australia to the US and Finland. Overall, it said that operations were up fivefold since the lockdowns.
"Use of our drone delivery service across all our locations increased more than 500 per cent from February to April," a spokeswoman said.
"We saw the number of orders double from February to March, then again from March to April, including thousands of deliveries in Australia during that time frame."
