It depends who you ask. And that confusion — after decades, five names, and one IATA code that quietly tells the whole story — is costing the Illawarra passengers it can't afford to lose.
Depending on who you ask, it's Shellharbour Airport. Or Wollongong Airport. Or Illawarra Regional Airport. Or Albion Park Aerodrome. Or — in the formal records of the Geographic Names Board of NSW — still Albion Park Aerodrome. The ICAO code changed to YSHL in 2019. The IATA code remains WOL — and it isn't changing anytime soon, because SHL is already taken by an airport near Shillong, India.
Link Airways lists the destination as Wollongong. Most travel booking sites say Wollongong. Airservices Australia uses Wollongong. When the Illawarra Mercury writes about the airport, it reaches for whatever name fits the sentence. When someone in Melbourne searches for flights to the Illawarra, they type Wollongong.
Airports are gateways. Their names are wayfinding tools. When a passenger in Brisbane searches for flights, they don't think about local government boundaries — they think about where they're going. If the airport's name doesn't match the city they know, they hesitate. Or they assume there's no airport. Or they book a flight to Sydney instead.
Shellharbour Council's decision to rename from Illawarra Regional Airport to Shellharbour Airport in 2019 was understandable from a council's perspective. The airport sits in Shellharbour City's local government area. Council invested heavily in the new terminal and business park. They wanted their city's name on the door. Fair enough.
But there's a tension here that's worth naming honestly.
Shellharbour is a city of about 80,000 people. The Wollongong metropolitan area — the region this airport actually serves — has a population of around 330,000. The broader Illawarra region stretches further still. And Wollongong is the name outsiders know. It's the name on the IATA code. It's the name people search for.
The airport's own IATA code — WOL — makes the case better than anything else. That code is embedded in every airline booking system in the world. It's in every travel itinerary, every flight tracking app, every airport arrivals board. It was assigned for a reason. And it's not changing.
Acknowledge both identities "Shellharbour Airport, serving Wollongong and the Illawarra" is a formula that works. It respects the council's ownership, names the city people recognise, and signals the regional catchment. Sydney Airport still uses the Kingsford Smith name in some contexts. Dual identity isn't unusual — and it doesn't require a formal name change.
Encourage airlines to use both "Wollongong (Shellharbour)" — as Link Airways and some booking platforms already do — is a small change that significantly reduces passenger confusion at the point of booking. This is where the decision to fly or not is actually made.
Own the digital real estate The airport's search optimisation, Google Maps listing and booking platform descriptions should consistently lead with Wollongong as the primary search term, even where the official name is Shellharbour Airport. The goal is to be found — and right now, too many potential passengers can't find this airport because they're searching for the wrong name.
A regional conversation is overdue A genuine dialogue between Shellharbour Council and Wollongong City Council about shared regional branding for the airport could unlock real benefits. This airport doesn't just serve Shellharbour. It serves the whole Illawarra. The Newcastle precedent is instructive — NTL grew from 118,000 passengers in 2003 to over a million by 2013, partly because everyone in the Hunter Valley called it their airport. The Illawarra deserves the same.
We call this airport Wollongong Airport because that's the name that connects it to the world. We respect everything Shellharbour Council has built and invested here over decades — the terminal, the business park, the infrastructure. And we think both things can be true at once.
The IATA code settled this argument when it was assigned. The question is whether the rest of the airport's identity catches up.
