Whitsunday Islands and Heart Reef Scenic Flight Airlie Beach

Airlie Beach and the airfield: where the flight begins

Airlie Beach is the resort town on the Queensland coast from which almost every trip into the Whitsunday Islands starts, and its airfield lies a short drive away on the road to Shute Harbour. A courtesy bus collects passengers from two points in Airlie Beach, on the main street about 40 minutes before the flight and at the Port of Airlie bus stop about 35 minutes before, or you can drive yourself and park free at the airfield, checking in at the office 30 minutes before departure. The air-conditioned lounge has luggage storage, so you can come straight from or to your hotel.

Flights leave through the day from 07:30 to mid-afternoon, so a Whitsundays scenic flight from Airlie Beach fits around a boat trip or a beach morning. The aircraft are small, high-winged planes in which every seat is a window seat, and the pilot briefs you before take-off and talks you through the route by headset, naming each island, bay and reef as it passes below.

The Whitsunday Islands from the air

Minutes after take-off the coast falls away and the Whitsunday Islands spread out below: a scattering of green, mountainous islands that are the drowned peaks of a coastal range, separated by the turquoise channels of the Whitsunday Passage. Most of the islands are national park and uninhabited, their forested slopes dropping to small sandy coves and fringing reefs that glow pale green in the shallows. From above you see the shapes of Hook Island with its deep inlets, Whitsunday Island with its long white beach and the resort islands near the mainland, with sailing boats as white dots between them.

Seeing the Whitsunday Islands from above is the quickest way to understand the geography of the group, and many visitors take the flight at the start of their stay to decide which island trips to book afterwards. The pilot flies at a height that keeps the detail sharp while fitting whole islands into the frame of your window, which is ideal for photographs.

Whitehaven Beach and Hill Inlet from above

Whitehaven Beach runs for about seven kilometres along the eastern side of Whitsunday Island, and its sand is almost pure silica, so white that it is unmistakable from the air. At the northern end of the beach the tidal estuary of Hill Inlet creates the most famous view in the Whitsundays, where sandbanks and turquoise water swirl together in patterns that change with every tide. From a boat you see this only from the lookout on the hill; from the aircraft you see the whole inlet at once, with the beach stretching away to the south.

The pilot circles so that both sides of the aircraft get the full view of Whitehaven Beach from the air and of Hill Inlet, and the patterns are at their most striking around low tide, when more of the sandbanks are exposed. If you also plan to land on the beach, our full-day cruises and sailing trips from Airlie Beach take you there by sea, and the two experiences complement each other well.

The Great Barrier Reef: Hardy Reef and the outer reef

From Whitehaven the aircraft heads east over open water to the outer Great Barrier Reef, around 50 kilometres from the coast. Here the reef appears as a maze of coral walls, lagoons and channels in every shade of blue and green, with waves breaking white along the outer edge where the reef meets the deep Coral Sea. Hardy Reef, Hook Reef and Bait Reef are the main formations in this part of the marine park, and from the air you can see the sand cays, the turtles and rays in the shallow lagoons and the pontoons where day boats moor.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet and a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a Great Barrier Reef scenic flight from Airlie Beach shows its scale in a way that no boat can, because you see the patterns of the reef rather than one patch of coral. The marine park fee is included in your ticket.

Heart Reef: the coral heart you can only see from the air

Heart Reef is a small, naturally heart-shaped formation of coral within Hardy Reef, about 17 metres across, first noticed by a pilot flying over the reef in 1975. It is protected: boats cannot moor there and nobody may snorkel or dive on it, so the only way to see Heart Reef is from the air. The pilot circles it so that every window gets a clear view, and on a calm day with the sun high the heart stands out clearly against the paler lagoon around it.

Seeing Heart Reef is the moment most passengers remember from the flight, and it is why this route is the most popular scenic flight in the Whitsundays. After the circuit the aircraft turns back towards the coast, passing over the islands again from a different angle before landing at the airfield about 60 minutes after take-off, where the courtesy bus returns you to Airlie Beach.