DRW Darwin

How deep the DRW board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from DRW. This reads the same 21 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 13of the 21 destinations are flown by one airline
• 9destinations run less than once a day
• 1destination has four or more departures a day
• 47.6%of the destinations name Airnorth, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at DRW

Nine airlines appear on the DRW board and they do not hold it evenly. Airnorth is on 10 of the 21 destinations, 47.6 per cent of them, and on 8 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 9.1 of the 30.5 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is Qantas on 9 destinations. 5 of the 9 airlines at DRW appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 10 of the 21 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on a DRW sector is usually another Airnorth aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. No alternate airport within road reach is held for DRW, so that second look is a longer road leg or a different day.

How much of the DRW board is daily

Of the 21 destinations, 12 are flown at least once a day and 9 are not, 3 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the DRW board is flown about once a day.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: DRW to Tennant Creek (TCA) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 16.4 of the 30.5 departures a day, 53.6 per cent of the whole board. More than half of everything that leaves DRW is aimed at those five places, so the depth on the board above is thinner than the destination count suggests, and a hand carry that is not going to one of them is planned around a single departure time.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Guangzhou CAN	China	China Southern Airlines	1	4,417	plan this
Sorong-Papua Island SOQ	Indonesia	Garuda Indonesia	1	1,282	plan this
Tennant Creek TCA	Australia	Airnorth	1	877	plan this
Elcho Island ELC	Australia	Airnorth	3	512	plan this
Townsville TSV	Australia	Airnorth	3	1,860	plan this
Milingimbi Island MGT	Australia	Airnorth	4	438	plan this
Denpasar-Bali Island DPS	Indonesia	Jetstar	4.1	1,764	the pair page
Maningrida MNG	Australia	Airnorth	5	367	plan this
McArthur River Mine MCV	Australia	Airnorth	6	718	plan this

The nine destinations out of DRW where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable.

The way back from DRW

The desk holds the return direction for 9 of the 21 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On none of those 9 does the return run more than a quarter thinner than the outbound, so a turnaround through DRW is a question of hours rather than of whether an aircraft exists.

The clock at DRW

DRW keeps Australia/Darwin time, five and a half hours ahead of Dubai all year.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 14:30 at DRW, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for three and a half hours. That is a narrow window for a signature, a customs query or an authority to release, and it is the reason a consignment for DRW is briefed the day before rather than on the morning it flies.

The night at DRW

2 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into Sydney (SYD) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from DRW that lands inside it leaves around 18:12, on a modelled block of 4h 18m. Into Adelaide (ADL) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from DRW that lands inside it leaves around 19:09, on a modelled block of 3h 51m. Those two departure times out of DRW are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where DRW turns up on the rest of this site

The airport also sits behind the Australia country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport.

The site publishes 5 airport pair pages that start or end at DRW, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Darwin to Melbourne (MEL), Darwin to Sydney (SYD) and Darwin to Brisbane City (BNE).

One courier posting names DRW as the airport a courier here flies from: Darwin.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with DRW already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 21 destinations above.