South Coast Seaplane will operate hourly scenic flights over Canberra between 9 am and 5 pm, one day every two weeks. Photo: South Coast Seaplanes, Facebook.
There have been constant setbacks and delays since we first heard the news seaplanes would be taking off from and landing on Lake Burley Griffin, but now we finally have a date.
And it’s as close as next month.
South Coast Seaplanes, based at Moruya Airport, has been approved by the National Capital Authority (NCA) to fly scenic loops over Canberra from early March in what it hopes will become a thriving tourist attraction.
“When we did trials a couple of years ago, one that that really struck me was how good a product this is,” chief pilot Tim Gilbo told Region this week.
“We take off from West Lake and go down around Mount Majura and Parliament House. Then, we back up to Kingston and past Black Mountain before going back in. It’s just really spectacular and very easy to do.”
The flights are actually the realisation of a vision from as far back as 2016 when the ACT Government’s tourism agency, Visit Canberra, was looking for ways to capitalise on the fact Singapore Airlines had started flying into the city.
“Visit Canberra was very keen to have as much product as they could here for international visitors,” Mr Gilbo said.
South Coast Seaplanes agreed to the proposal, because “it’s just a lake, and they’re all runways to us”.
Kingston Foreshore from the air. Photo: James Coleman.
Mr Gilbo said flight paths were cleared years ago with the Canberra Airport, but it has been a busy few years meeting with the NCA and lake-user groups to make sure the flights don’t impact recreational activities on the lake.
“The lake is used for a lot of things, and seaplanes are still very rare in Australia – people don’t know much about them – so we’ve had to do a lot of work in communicating to other lake users, finding out what they do and making sure we won’t impact that.”
Exact dates and prices are yet to be confirmed, but Mr Gilbo pencilled in 7 or 8 March as the inaugural day, with flights taking off from West Lake every hour between 9 am and 5 pm at a cost of around $295 per person per flight.
Passengers will board and disembark from the floating pontoon on Acton Peninsula, near the National Museum of Australia.
“Initially, we’ll be looking at something like a day every two weeks, and then hopefully expand on that depending on how much the phone rings really,” Mr Gilbo said.
“I always say to people that the easy part is actually landing a seaplane somewhere. The hard part is making it financially sustainable. And that’s the bit we don’t know so much about yet, but we’ll certainly try.”
Down the track, South Coast Seaplanes would like to offer overnight options to places like Jindabyne or Narooma.
“But there’s a bit more to that logistically, so we’ll just take it one step at a time.”
In the air in a seaplane. Photo: James Coleman.
Updates on ticket availability will be published to South Coast Seaplanes’ social-media pages in the coming days.
Meanwhile, Sydney Seaplanes was slated to begin flights between Rose Bay and Lake Burley Griffin halfway through 2023 but has since come up against air-traffic issues on the Sydney end.
Sydney Seaplanes managing director Aaron Shaw said these need to be worked through with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and Air Services Australia before they can come to Canberra, but he didn’t give a timeline.
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