Originally Posted by
Australopithecus
The questions are valid, but posed as a taxpayer. If Rex was able to generate funding for a fleet expansion they certainly didn’t need survival funds from the taxpayer. Someone owes me a couple of bucks.
That is particularly so when you consider the stated purpose and eligibility criteria for the Regional Airline Funding Assistance grant program.
The objective of this Grant Opportunity is to assist:
- domestic commercial airlines operating Regular Public Transport services to regional and remote locations, and
- a range of essential services air operators,
with cashflow to assist them maintain essential air links during the COVID-19 period, subject to eligibility and analysis of the organisation’s financial situation. The funding is seen as a ‘last resort’ option when a range of other strategies to manage an airline’s position have been undertaken.
Emphasis on '
last resort'. Clearly Rex had not undertaken the most basic of the 'other strategies' available to them; a capital raising via debt using fleet as security. To the extent that they needed a template for that, they just needed to pick up a newspaper on 25 March and read about what Qantas did.