Rex to fly between Australian capital cities

[AviatorInsight]

What is a DH Shortz? Google couldn't tell me?

The Shorts 360 aircraft. Hazelton had 2 of them and ceased operations in the mid 90s. Sunstate (now Qantaslink) had some as well, as did Airlines of Tasmania. The last operator in Australia was Sunshine Express Airlines in the early 2000s.

The 360 was dubbed as the 'super shed' being the bigger brother of the Shorts 330.

 

[farmboy]

I have not flown with them since Qantaslink introduced the Port Lincoln service

Hmm, that didn't last long, did it? Qantas bullied Rex out of several routes that it held for years, and then just pulled the plug on SA.
The argument about the 'old SAABs' overlooks two main points.
Rex SAABs provides frequency, which is prized by many inland destinations, enabling return city flights by medical, legal, and business types daily. They could not do this using Dash 8s, eg.
Secondly, SAAB has committed to service contracts with the US military for years to come, consequently the SAABs can and will be around for years yet.

 

[farmboy]

Funny old business, the airline business. REX have been seeking Government assistance as they were going bad and had a lot of nasty old competition from the big red guy and could not compete. I have not flown with them since Qantaslink introduced the Port Lincoln service as their customer service was unbelievably bad but we had no option but to suck it up. Just hope this mob do not get into the major routes but if they do then they will fail.

'going bad?' They have made consistent profit for many years, and have no debt. When the pandemic hit, the simply did what they always do. Act. They could see that without immediate action, they would have to cease flying altogether, to many of the remote destinations that they alone serve. So they acted right away with good case, and the government came good for the benefit of the remote zones they serve. Nothing ominous about it. The result was that they are now flying to 80% of their destinations on a continuous basis, to the great benefit of those places.
Qantas or Virgin would never service those places.

 

[farmboy]

Have you flown in one? It's a huge step back in time, in fact a step back 20 years ago and they've not spent a cent on refurbishing the insides by the looks. They are pretty dire.

Ha! I recently flew back from New Zealand in a near new A320, then got on a Rex plane for an hour. It was noisy but the seat compared very well with the A320 seat. The basic service is fine. if this level of service enables them to have a higher flight frequency, then I'm very happy with it.
PS, I could have waited all day and then flown in a Dash 8.......

 

[jase05]

Yes I have flown in them many times between SYD-WGA.

Gets me from A-B. Good flights. No frills.
I’m not sure what step back in time means.
It has a better record than a next gen aircraft of note.

Yeah, I fly the SYD-WGA route occasionally aswell as a couple of intra SA routes and don’t have a problem with them.

 

[jase05]

Hmm, that didn't last long, did it? Qantas bullied Rex out of several routes that it held for years, and then just pulled the plug on SA.
The argument about the 'old SAABs' overlooks two main points.
Rex SAABs provides frequency, which is prized by many inland destinations, enabling return city flights by medical, legal, and business types daily. They could not do this using Dash 8s, eg.
Secondly, SAAB has committed to service contracts with the US military for years to come, consequently the SAABs can and will be around for years yet.

Yep, QF are hit and miss on many routes in SA and the government have stranded BHQ. The AP group are using ZL to get freight into these areas and currently the BHQ air freight is coming from all around the country to ADL and then forwarded on to BHQ

 

[PineappleSkip]

Was it QF that stranded BHQ or the SA govt border closure?

cheers skip

 

[dajop]

Was it QF that stranded BHQ or the SA govt border closure?

When did QF last serve BHQ? I know they did circa 2000, but I just can't remember in recent history when they've served BHQ.

 

[jase05]

Was it QF that stranded BHQ or the SA govt border closure?

cheers skip

Sorry, the SA government. My fault for trying to do 2 things at once. Trying to type on my phone and trying to book some freight on ZL to urgently go today. Have amended

 

[farmboy]

Sorry, the SA government. My fault for trying to do 2 things at once. Trying to type on my phone and trying to book some freight on ZL to urgently go today. Have amended

Rex is flying to BHQ four days a week, Wed/Fri from Sydney/Dubbo.
Mon/Fri ex Adelaide.

Rex currently flying to 80% of its regular destinations. Thanks to the gov subsidy that so irritates Virgin?
The irritation confirms just how out of touch the dead horse is, and what little regard they have for the inland that provides practically everything they need.

PS. I was a very strong supporter of Virgin Blue, but management of its anticedent is the text book on how to destroy a good airline.

 

[elemist]

Fly with Rex semi regularly here in WA down to Albany and back. It's certainly not luxury travel, but for the 1 hour flight it's more than sufficient. The Saab's are far more comfy than the Fokker 50's that Skywest/VA were flying before they exited the route.

It will be interesting to see if Rex could scale and run a competitive business flying to capitals with larger jets. Finance wise they have quite a good track record, and looking at how they run in general they don't seem to buy into the constant one up man ship that QF and VA have been going at. Whilst this is ultimately good for the consumer - just look at how business class has improved coast to coast since VA got involved. It has come at quite the financial cost to both VA and QF.

Though in contrast they have next to no competition on most of their routes, and from reading here and around in general when QF gets involved in a route Rex generally lose out.

I think over the next few years airlines are going to be much more brutal in terms of services. If they're not making a profit and can't make a route work i think it will get cut quite quickly. The constant ongoing upgrades of cabins, lounges etc will get scaled back whilst everyone focus's on profitability and recovering.

 

[dajop]

Though in contrast they have next to no competition on most of their routes, and from reading here and around in general when QF gets involved in a route Rex generally lose out.

Certainly the case with more marginal routes. But there are some competitive routes, on which Rex operated reasonably high frequencies, pre-COVID. These include those they competed with QF head to head, being SYD-WGA (with 31 weekly ZL services), SYD-DBO (30) and ADL-PLO (52) as well as two routes where they competed with both QF and VA, being MEL-MQL (20) and SYD-ABX (25).

 

[farmboy]

when QF gets involved in a route Rex generally lose out.
Rex won't ever run a route at a loss for long, so when Qantas dumps capacity, as they sometimes do, Rex backs out rather than fight and lose money. They did that recently when Qantas took over some routes in SA. But Qantas then backed down and the SA gov actually invited Rex to resume flights to the places usurped and then abandoned by Qantas.

If they're (Rex) not making a profit and can't make a route work i think it will get cut quite quickly.
That's exactly what they do.
I doubt very much they will even touch the city routes unless Virgin totally disappears, - which I think is going to happen. And I suspect Rex does too. They have their own pilot academy. Because they normally fly below the press radar, there is a lot of misinformation about the company now being speculated upon by journalists who really need to brush up a bit.
They do fly to some inland centres in competition with Qantas, eg. Dubbo, which had 10 flights a day to Sydney prior to the pandemic.

 

[elemist]

I guess being a much smaller company they don't have to capacity to keep loss making routes around. So easier to abandon them altogether and move your aircraft and staff to an alternative route than makes you money.

Really that's just smart business sense. Airline's seem to be very strong headed emotional companies where it's more about pride than making money.

 

[Melburnian1]

Rex received (or is receiving) $54m of the total $198m made available by the Federal Government for COVID-19 rural airline assistance.

 

[p--and--t]

Rex received (or is receiving) $54m of the total $198m made available by the Federal Government for COVID-19 rural airline assistance.

From the site below it looks like they got a total of $67M

First two appear to be grants to run minimum services, the third rebates on gov charges etc

$53.8M + $10.6M + $3.0M

Grants

 

[Quickstatus]

The ace card that ZL has is the 34 seater aircraft they operate. Everyone operates larger aircraft which are uncompetitive. It’s not true that ZL loses out the QF. It seems to operate quite well on at least the WGA-SYD route

Though in contrast they have next to no competition on most of their routes, and from reading here and around in general when QF gets involved in a route Rex generally lose out.

just look at him ow business class has improved coast to coast since VA got involved. It has come at quite the financial cost to both VA and QF.

Almost financially unsustainable which is why a lot of the A330 originally on the C-C have been replaced with 737.

 

[muppet]

From the site below it looks like they got a total of $67M

First two appear to be grants to run minimum services, the third rebates on gov charges etc

$53.8M + $10.6M + $3.0M

Grants

Which is an insane amount of money handed to them while the Rex chairman chastises Scurrah for seeking government help.

To put in perspective, $67m is about 25% of Rex’s passenger revenue of $270m in 2019.

It would be the equivalent of gifting Qantas and Jetstar $2.5 billion on their $10b of domestic revenue.

Or gifting VA $900 million on its $3.6 billion of domestic revenue.

 

[OATEK]

Which is an insane amount of money handed to them while the Rex chairman chastises Scurrah for seeking government help.

To put in perspective, $67m is about 25% of Rex’s passenger revenue of $270m in 2019.

It would be the equivalent of gifting Qantas and Jetstar $2.5 billion on their $10b of domestic revenue.

Or gifting VA $900 million on its $3.6 billion of domestic revenue.

Do you remember the story about comparing apples and pears, instead of apples and apples?

 

[Chicken]

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