Australia's new regional airline took to the skies yesterday, but one industry expert warned it faced a bumpy ride given the high costs involved.
Regional Express, to be known as REX, is owned and operated by Australiawide Airlines. The consortium is a merger of regional carriers Kendall and Hazelton Airlines.
Kendall and Hazelton were subsidiaries of Ansett Airlines, once Australia's largest domestic carrier, which collapsed earlier this year with unsustainable debts. While Ansett stopped flying, Kendall and Hazelton stayed in the air.
PHOTO: AFP
REX will have a fleet of 29 SAAB 340 and Metro 23 turboprop aircraft. It will initially fly 1,300 times a week between 35 regional and metropolitan destinations in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania states.
But as the new carrier embarked on its inaugural flight yesterday from Wagga Wagga in southwest New South Wales to Sydney, Aircraft Owners and Pilots' Association technical director Bill Hamilton said the airline would be lucky to still be operating within six months.
"Airport charges, fuel charges, the cost of maintaining aircraft, the cost of paying for all the services you have to have for an aircraft ... are really quite high," Hamilton told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. At the end of the day, this is what will beat them," he said.
But Australiawide Airlines CEO Michael Jones said he was confident of the airline's future. He said that since creating the new airline last Thursday, bookings have increased about 25 percent over the preceding week's figures for Kendall and Hazelton. He dismissed Hamilton's comment as ``both uninformed and irrelevant on the basis that he hasn't seen our business plan.''
Jones said REX was different to other carrier that have tried and failed to break into Australia's regional routes because it was a merger of two established airlines.
"So we don't have to establish the infrastructure, we don't have to train the people and we don't have to establish the markets," he said.
Ansett Airlines and Qantas Airways dominated the sector for decades, but Ansett collapsed this year after a cutthroat price war with Qantas and Virgin Blue.
FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION: The UK would continue to reinforce ties with Taiwan ‘in a wide range of areas’ as a part of a ‘strong unofficial relationship,’ a paper said The UK plans to conduct more freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs David Lammy told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. British Member of Parliament Desmond Swayne said that the Royal Navy’s HMS Spey had passed through the Taiwan Strait “in pursuit of vital international freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.” Swayne asked Lammy whether he agreed that it was “proper and lawful” to do so, and if the UK would continue to carry out similar operations. Lammy replied “yes” to both questions. The
‘OF COURSE A COUNTRY’: The president outlined that Taiwan has all the necessary features of a nation, including citizens, land, government and sovereignty President William Lai (賴清德) discussed the meaning of “nation” during a speech in New Taipei City last night, emphasizing that Taiwan is a country as he condemned China’s misinterpretation of UN Resolution 2758. The speech was the first in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to give across Taiwan. It is the responsibility of Taiwanese citizens to stand united to defend their national sovereignty, democracy, liberty, way of life and the future of the next generation, Lai said. This is the most important legacy the people of this era could pass on to future generations, he said. Lai went on to discuss
SECOND SPEECH: All political parties should work together to defend democracy, protect Taiwan and resist the CCP, despite their differences, the president said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday discussed how pro-Taiwan and pro-Republic of China (ROC) groups can agree to maintain solidarity on the issue of protecting Taiwan and resisting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The talk, delivered last night at Taoyuan’s Hakka Youth Association, was the second in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to give across Taiwan. Citing Taiwanese democracy pioneer Chiang Wei-shui’s (蔣渭水) slogan that solidarity brings strength, Lai said it was a call for political parties to find consensus amid disagreements on behalf of bettering the nation. All political parties should work together to defend democracy, protect Taiwan and resist
By refusing to agree spending increases to appease US President Donald Trump, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to derail a summit that NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte needs to run smoothly for the sake of the military alliance’s future survival. Ahead of yesterday’s gathering in The Hague, Netherlands, things were going off the rails. European officials have expressed irritation at the spoiler role that Sanchez is playing when their No. 1 task is to line up behind a pledge to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. Rutte needed to keep Spain in line while preventing others such as Slovakia
RSS