Domestic airfares rise after Rex collapse

[Mattg]

Domestic airfares jump after collapse of Rex

The demise of the regional carrier is more bad news for travellers as domestic raise fares and Qantas lifts its fees for changing bookings.

www.afr.com

Domestic airfares have surged since Regional Express stopped flying capital city routes in July, and some tickets now cost more than during a typical Christmas peak period.

The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Economics index for restricted economy fares jumped from 81.3 in July – Rex’s last full month of operations before it went into administration – to 93.3 in August and 93.6 this month, the highest in more than a year.

I noticed this as well when booking a domestic flight from CBR to MEL the other day. Without Rex competing on the route, Virgin's Economy Choices fares are now matching the match higher Qantas fares, rather than the Rex fares. You can see similar things on other ex-Rex jet routes.

 

[Saab34]

The last time we had 3 main players was 2007 before Tiger. Many of these routes, especially Capital runs have had 4 solid carriers for 15 years.

Tiger had 9 flights per day MEL-SYD, Rex 5/6, and now that fourth player has nothing. That’s slot of seats pulled out, especially in peak periods, fares are going to rise.

 

[henrus]

Arguing both sides here (and it's going to sound a bit sympathetic to QF), ok sure they introduced competition to these routes but at the same time $49 on routes like SYD-MEL were never sustainable. Qantas got a lot of cough from Rex for capacity dumping on regional routes but arguably Rex was doing the same thing on major trunk routes during their now failed 737 experiment.

I noticed this as well when booking a domestic flight from CBR to MEL the other day. Without Rex competing on the route, Virgin's Economy Choices fares are now matching the match higher Qantas fares, rather than the Rex fares. You can see similar things on other ex-Rex jet routes.

The AFR isn't wrong sure the "real fares" are the highest in a year but it's still lower than many parts of the 14 year previous period (which I guess is a good thing), using the same BITRE data for the CBR/MEL route with a red rolling average you can kind of see where the average has sat. It's also worth noting that BRITE adjust their data for CPI.

Graph is CBR/MEL real prices Jan 2010 to Aug 2024:



Graph is SYD/MEL real prices Jan 2010 to Aug 2024, aside from the entry of rex a bit more stable: