Tom Price Airport is an airport near Tom Price

Tom Price, Western Australia

Tom Price, situated in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, is an industrial town. The town is located inland, at the edge of the Hamersley Range...

, Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. It has a short dirt runway capable of handing small general aviation

General aviation

General aviation is one of the two categories of civil aviation. It refers to all flights other than military and scheduled airline and regular cargo flights, both private and commercial. General aviation flights range from gliders and powered parachutes to large, non-scheduled cargo jet flights...

 aircraft and light turboprop

Turboprop

A turboprop engine is a type of turbine engine which drives an aircraft propeller using a reduction gear.The gas turbine is designed specifically for this application, with almost all of its output being used to drive the propeller...

s. Qantas served Tom Price from its Perth base back in 1999.

In December 2008, Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto Group

The Rio Tinto Group is a diversified, British-Australian, multinational mining and resources group with headquarters in London and Melbourne. The company was founded in 1873, when a multinational consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto river, in Huelva, Spain from the...

 lodged an application with the local Shire to upgrade the runway and facilities to handle Airbus A320

Airbus A320

The Airbus A320 family is a family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger jet airliners manufactured by Airbus Industrie.Airbus was originally a consortium of European aerospace companies, and is now fully owned by EADS. Airbus's name has been Airbus SAS since 2001...

 and Boeing 737

Boeing 737

The Boeing 737 is a short- to medium-range, twin-engine narrow-body jet airliner. Originally developed as a shorter, lower-cost twin-engine airliner derived from Boeing's 707 and 727, the 737 has developed into a family of nine passenger models with a capacity of 85 to 215 passengers...

 size aircraft. This was planned to ease traffic at Paraburdoo Airport

Paraburdoo Airport

Paraburdoo Airport is an airport serving Paraburdoo, a town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The airport is located northeast of Paraburdoo. It also serves the town of Tom Price, with bus services completing the extra to Tom Price....

 and allow tourist to access the nearby Karijini National Park.

However, on 16 January 2009, suffering the effects of lower demand and ore prices as a result of Global Financial Crisis, these plans were scrapped as Rio's capital expenditure program was cut.

The strategic location of the planned airport has been chosen also to handle the expansions at Brockman minesite, by Pilbara Iron.