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Direct flights to Melbourne on the cards

East Kimberley Marketing Group chairman Michael McConachy is pushing for a direct travel route between Kununurra and Melbourne.

Direct flights between Kununurra and Melbourne could take off as early as next year with Kimberley tourism operators looking to help fund a weekly service to boost access to the region.

The concept is being driven by the East Kimberley Marketing Group which was set up in late 2013 to improve the promotion of the Kimberley and look at ways to facilitate an increase in visitors. Chairman Michael McConachy said the group had seized on the findings of a report commissioned by Tourism WA and the Shire of Wyndham East which identified access to the region as very difficult, time consuming and costly.

He said the local tourism industry wanted to encourage a major airline to start a weekly return flight between Kununurra and Melbourne during the tourist season with demand to dictate any future expansion to the service.

"What we are looking to do is underwrite that airline for about 20 flights per year during the main tourist season to start off with," he said.

"Melbourne has been identified by Tourism WA as a key market and I think that has a lot to do with it being a little colder and people there looking for a warmer getaway during the winter period.

"We are very confident that we will prove it as a viable airline route and we will hopefully be doing that with one of the key aviation companies as a coded flight, not a charter."

Mr McConachy said the service would be paired with an estimated $1 million marketing campaign which the group was currently seeking funding for from the State Government.

He said the marketing campaign and community support would be critical to getting the plan off the ground and making it sustainable long term.

The exact timeframe, what day of the week it will operate, how much the service will cost and which airline would take it on are still to be investigated but Mr McConachy said he was determined to have it operating by next year.

"At this stage we've got four direct flights to Perth a week with Virgin and that's servicing the population of Perth, which I believe is about 1.6 million people," he said.

"In Melbourne you are targeting about four million people and also servicing Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart as well; to get one flight a week we would be confident we would prove it viable.

"It will also have huge benefits for locals and we are not only going to need the tourism industry and local business to help us underwrite it but we are going to need the locals to use the flight and commit to it, if they want it to stay."

Mr McConachy said it "would not be the cheapest flight in Australia" but it would be better value than the current options of flying via Darwin or Perth and also cut travel time to about half a day.

"It's another way to access the Kimberley but it's also going to improve the livability of the town because people who are from the Eastern States at the moment quite often have to travel overnight or stay in Darwin for periods of time on their way," he said.

"It also opens up opportunities for people wanting to send their children to boarding school and for business people from the south east of the country wanting to explore expanding their operations in the region.

"We see this being critical for the town to grow it and it's something as a community we need to work together on and fight for very hard because the upside is tremendous.

"The clock is ticking but we are determined to have it flying by 2016 and we are backing it up with real information.

"We want to have a presentation for the airlines that's second to none."

Shire president John Moulden said the council was aware of the proposal and believed it would be a fantastic coup for the town and the wider East Kimberley region.

He said Cr Keith Wright was a member of the East Kimberley Marketing Group and that the council would have a key role to play in the plan.

"There is a lot of interest in the flights for tourism but I think it would be fantastic for the locals as well," he said.