The World's Last Uncrossed Airbridge

Now that Australia has a blue-ice runway established at its Casey base in Antarctica, a permanent airbridge to Hobart, Tasmania will be established next summer using a 40 seat A319. At present the ship transit time between Australia and its three permanent Antarctic stations is somewhere between eight days and two weeks, dependent upon the pack-ice encountered. The A319 fleet will have the capability of doing the two-way trip to Casey without having to refuel, thus obviating the need to ship airplane fuel in. The Airbus can do a round-trip of over nine hours and will use conventional tires rather than skis.

Australia administers about 42% of the Antarctic continent from its three bases of Casey, Mawson and Davis with a fourth outpost on Macquarie Island. The US maintains its airlinks with its Antarctic bases from Christchurch in New Zealand. The Australian Antarctic Division has a five year contract with SkyTraders to operate the leased jets. Airbus representatives are keen to see the service ultimately take off and develop into a tourism venture. We're not sure how this could be done under the new ETOPS rules however.