MacAir Airlines
regional airline based in Townsville, Queensland, Australia.

MacAir Airlines Pty Ltd was a regional airline based in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. It operated scheduled passenger services throughout Queensland from major regional locations, as well as regular and ad hoc charters for the minerals industry in Queensland. Its main operations base was Townsville Airport, with hubs at Cairns, Brisbane and Mount Isa.
In January 2009, the airline was placed in receivership.
History
MacAir Airlines was established and started charter operations in 1992 as McKinlay Air Charters, adding scheduled services in 1998. In May 2000 the Collings family sold the airline to Transjet, owner of Transtate Airlines. The two brands were merged and operated under the MacAir name. In November 2003 MacAir acquired Horizon Airlines. MacAir Airlines grew to become a major player in Australia's regional aviation network and played an important role in providing transport to both passengers and freight throughout regional Queensland.
MacAir Airlines was based in Townsville.
“MacAir Airlines” enters the record as regional airline based in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what MacAir, Airlines and regional can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q908014. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 1992, 1998 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “MacAir Airlines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.