Whyalla Airport guide

Whyalla Airport (ICAO YWHA) is a regional airport on the Eyre Peninsula coast of South Australia, in the locality of Mullaquana. It lies about 7 km southwest of the centre of Whyalla, the steelmaking city at the head of Spencer Gulf. The airport sits at an elevation of 12 metres.

The Australian Government handed the airport to the City of Whyalla in 1991, and the council has run it since. A refurbished terminal building was completed in mid-2014. QantasLink began its Adelaide service in April 2015, and the route is the airport's scheduled link to the state capital. Regional Express also flew the route until it withdrew in July 2023 over a dispute about passenger security screening charges.

Two sealed asphalt runways serve the field. Runway 05/23 is 1,500 metres long and runway 17/35 is 1,686 metres. By 2009 the pavement rating of the main runway had fallen to PCN 8, which kept heavy jets such as the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 away. Governments committed $30 million to a runway upgrade in January 2025, and works completed in June 2025 allow 74-seat Q400 turboprops to operate on Whyalla routes. Passenger numbers peaked at about 79,000 in 2007-08 and have run between 37,000 and 78,000 a year since.