All not quiet on Australia’s Western Front: Qantas declines to move to new Perth airport terminal

While it is quite a big city, with over two million people in the metropolitan region, Perth does not readily spring to mind when thinking about cities in Australia, compared to the bigger ones in the east and southeast of the country.

Its isolation so extreme that NASA astronauts regard it as standing out like a sore thumb in an ocean of black when they pass over it at night, Perth (and Western Australia generally) is actually very important economically to Australia as the nation's primary mineral and petroleum mining and exporting region.

Perth also has the potential to become more important as the western air gateway to the country and possibly to act more as a hub than it does presently, capitalising on actual and prospective nonstop long haul flights.

But at the moment its development has been stalled by a spat between major airline Qantas and the airport management over a move to a new purpose-built central terminal, which is intended to help drive local and national economies.