Originally Posted by
TBM-Legend
...and you can't prove that they are heavily subsidised! Who is subsidising them? Not the Toowoomba Council.
Yeah I don't think that particular council would need to give subsidies because they only own the older Toowoomba City Airport which is strictly GA. But even if a council does subsidise an airline to provide services that's hardly a crime.
Only last week it came out in the ongoing defamation case Wagners v Jones that one of Jones' claims was that the Wagners had bribed Qantas, specifically Alan Joyce, to provide services to their new airport. Wagners denied that any subsidy or incentive was provided to Qantas. Put whatever spin you like on that but commercial incentives exist throughout business and commerce and would rarely fall within the scope of bribery.
In the case of any regional airport trying to attract an airline to service a particular route there would rarely be more than one operator even interested in the route. Who else apart from JetGo is interested in the proposed Karatha service or was interested in their Illawarra services? Who else apart from Air North was interested in Wellcamp/Melbourne? I don't think Qantas faced much, if any, competition to get Wellcamp/Sydney and Rex, the only other current operator there is flying government subsidised routes. If there are to be incentives, so be it because sadly that is part of the price of having regional air services.