 Its main base and flight centre is Darwin International Airport, with other bases at Brisbane Airport, Cairns Airport, Perth Airport and Essendon Airport in Melbourne.The airline was formed and started operations in 1964 as Skywest Aviation, which acquired East-West Airlines in 1984 and was itself acquired by Ansett Airlines in 1987.The company was divided into airline and non-airline operations and the non-airline operations were purchased in 1996 by Paspaley Pearling (which by that time had been operating aircraft to its pearl farms for over ten years) and renamed.