In travel news and trending online, Japan Airlines is offering free domestic flights within Japan if you book your international and domestic flights all together. This is to get you out of the usual destinations, like Tokyo, and get you exploring the rest of Japan. It also battles overcrowding in Japan’s major cities and boosts tourism in small areas of the country.

Japan Airlines also has an Explorer Pass where you get free check-in luggage and free unlimited wifi on the plane when you book your domestic flights through your Explorer Pass.

What if airlines offer this Australia? Which domestic airports would be worth flying to for stopover? We have loads near interesting activities you can do!

Here are a few:

Kingscote Airport, South Australia

Kingscote

This is the airport for Kangaroo Island.

Kingscote is Kangaroo Island’s largest town, a pretty seaside town worth a stopover. Kingscote nearly became South Australia’s capital, but when they realised it was too remote, most of the settlement relocated to Adelaide.

Fly into Kingscote for memorable hikes at Flinders Chase National Park. It’s a 46 minute drive west and it’s known for interesting walks. A highlight is the Remarkable Rocks feature that takes you to these towering rock formations made of precariously balanced granite boulders shaped by the wind and the sea over time; while the Waterfall Creek Hike takes you to a gorgeous seasonal waterfall.

Head to Seal Bay, a 41 minute drive south to do a Seal Bay Research Tour. It’s a behind-the-scenes tour conducted by experienced senior guides that give you access to the research that is currently underway to help conserve the Australian Sea Lion. It’s an Australian first!

A 40 minute drive west takes you to the best beach voted by Australians in 2023. Stokes Bay Beach is protected by pounding surf by a giant rockpool making it perfect to swim in. Getting there is an experience as well. You have to trek along the bay, make your way through a headland of boulders before reaching this beautiful paradise.

Shark Bay Airport, Western Australia

Monkey Mia

Also known as Monkey Mia Airport, this is 2 hour flight from Perth on the Coral Coast.

This is the home of Shark Bay which is a World Heritage Site and definately worth a visit.

It was labelled a Worth Heritage Site due to it’s marine life: they have dugongs (Shark Bay has one eighth of the world’s dugong population), dolphins, sharks, rays, turtles and fish; it’s also home to Wooramel Seagrass Bank which has the largest seagrass meadow in the world; home to annual wildflowers; and home to Hamelin Pools which is the only place in the world with a range of stromatolite forms (Living stromatolites are found in only a few salty lagoons or bays on Earth. Western Australia is internationally significant for its variety of stromatolite sites, both living and fossilised. Fossils of the earliest known stromatolites, about 3.5 billion years old)

An 18 minute drive from the airport takes you to Monkey Mia Conservation Park where you can have a close encounter with wild dolphins on the beach. 

It also offers scenic flights from the airport offering you some incredible aerial views of pristine white sand beaches, clear turquoise waters and a pink lake.

You can fly over Francois Peron National Park, this has the beach known with red sand and turquoise waters. The National Park offer a really nice campground. There’s a range of outdoor activities you can do here (mountain biking, cycling, snorkeling, diving, abseiling, water skiing, windsurfing, rock climbing, horse riding and there’s a high ropes course).

You can also fly over Dirk Hartog Island where you can spot dugong grazing on the seagrass.

Wild dolphins at Monkey Mia Conservation Park

Wild dolphins at Monkey Mia Conservation Park

Francois Peron National Park campground

Palm Beach Airport, NSW

Sydney Seaplanes water airport

Not your traditional airport. This is a water airport for seaplanes not a lot of people know about, except the locals that have to hear it all the time.

It’s located at the north end of Governor Phillip Drive and Golf Drive, just south of Barrenjoey headland and the Barrenjoey Lighthouse.

Palm Beach Seaplanes go from Palm Beach to Rose Bay, Cottage Point and Berowra Waters and they also offer a scenic flight around the harbour.

In Palm Beach you can check out the Barrenjoey Lighthouse. Always a fun hike to do and you can choose from a couple of trails, Smugglers trail is a fun and challenging hike to the top, it’s steeper and shorter. It’s a trail made by custom officers that were monitoring smugglers bringing contraband items into Broken Bay in 1850. Once you get to the headlands the views are stunning overlooking Palm Beach and West Head. The lighthouse itself, is a heritage lighthouse built in 1881.