That was the impression the airline's CEO John Gissing gave those who attended a Dubbo Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Taronga Western Plains Zoo on Wednesday.

It was Regional Development Australia (RDA) Orana chairman John Walkom who hit him up with the question on everyone's lips - when would the airline provide direct flights from Dubbo to Melbourne, Canberra or Brisbane?

Mr Gissing said the airline's priority was maintaining the quality of its Dubbo to Sydney route, not risking its future by starting up services that might not be viable in the long-term.

Decisions about direct versus connecting services required the airline to "tread carefully", Mr Gissing said.

"We've just made a decision to fly from Toowoomba to Sydney, that has an impact on our custom from Brisbane to Sydney," he said.

"In doing that we're tying up an asset, using a slot in Sydney. We only make those decisions very carefully and based on some very good analysis of the next three to five years."

Even if indications suggested there was a demand for a direct service between Dubbo and a particular city now, Mr Gissing said, there was no guarantee that demand would remain.

"The second thing is, a lot of those direct services from places like Dubbo require smaller aircraft - the economics of that are you could never make that work with even a 50-seater and to be honest we're not in the game of aircraft smaller than 50-seaters.

"We have a 36-seater this is primarily for short runway operation. In time, the nature of our fleet will change, the demands will mean we need to move into new aircraft, trying to find a medium to long-term solution for direct services is very challenging."

Numerous airlines servicing regional Australia had gone bankrupt in recent years, Mr Gissing said.

"We certainly don't want to damage the long-term future of what's the longest-serving regional airline, so by all means keep harassing us and asking us the question, but we will not risk what is the best service to Sydney with direct services that we don't believe will be viable in the long-term."

Mr Gissing, a former chief pilot at Hazelton Airlines who had personally clocked up thousands of flight hours, said availability of landing spots at Sydney Airport also had to be considered.

"The average holding time at Sydney airport used to be 45 minutes and it was desperately difficult to get a landing spot," he said.

"To solve that, that regional airlines like Hazelton way back then set up a hub operation in Dubbo and Orange, and markets west of those centres desperately wanted direct services to Sydney. But in reality you couldn't do that in a viable way, you had to do a hub and spoke model and connect like that.

"Slots are more available (in Sydney) these days but we shouldn't kid ourselves it will always be that way, we have to stick together to protect access to the capital city for regional centres.

"All around the world smaller aircraft have been pushed out of capital city hubs, and I'd hate to think there would ever be a time when regional air services would ever be denied access."

Later, Mr Walkom said it appeared unlikely QantasLink would introduce flights from Dubbo to other destinations anytime soon.

"It's obviously a commercial decision they have to make and it seems it's not viable nor sustainable for them to introduce that," he said.

"I think it throws the ball back into our court to continue to grow our airport so it might come up on the radar for other airlines to offer those services.

"We hear about other airlines going belly-up because they didn't remain viable, and if QantasLink is already up and running and couldn't make destinations other than Sydney viable from Dubbo then it's fair to say, who would?

"But then as Mr Gissing said in his address, something like the Taronga Western Plains Zoo is truly of an international standard, so the city also has a lot to offer as a destination".

Mr Gissing said QantasLink very much valued its Dubbo customer base, evidenced by its decision to operate the larger 74-seat Q400 from the city a couple of years ago.

"It says a lot about Dubbo that we were willing to commit the Q400, it's a special aircraft, the best turboprop out there, it's quick, it's quiet and it cost $30 million," he said.

"When we buy an asset like that we've got to be very careful that we apply that high cost asset to the right markets.

"We were very confident about coming here with it and I'm pleased to say it has attracted additional custom, and we're confident we'll continue to invest in markets like this (Dubbo) that show growth potential."

Mr Gissing also took the opportunity to reinforce the airline's support for a second airport for Sydney, saying it would continue to lobby governments to "encourage that development".

"As to where our services will end up, we would like to bring international together with our domestic and regional operations. We moved (the latter) to T3 a year-and-a-half ago and that's been a phenomenal success," he said.

"A long-term vision for us is to bring international business to that side of the airport as well, but they're only discussions at the moment."

Meanwhile Mr Gissing said he had received useful feedback from those who attended the Dubbo breakfast, including "things like bags not being covered in Sydney, there was wet weather and they weren't putting the tarp over the baggage trolley" right through to "issues about potential changes in the mining and resources industry".