Originally Posted by
Epicurus
Skytrans (the original) was a great regional airline when the Barnard’s owned it. Great people, great atmosphere and a great place to work. Once the Wild’s got their grubby hands on the airline, along with the then CEO Mr Siva, they kept growing the airline by purchasing ancient Dash 8’s during the mining boom. They didn’t have the brains to foresee a likely mining downturn or levelling off, so suddenly the mining boom tanked they were left with old buckets for planes with not enough utilisation. The slippery Wilds blamed their demise on REX winning government contracts but that is a load of BS and the blame lays at their own incompetent feet. They got greedy and had a posse of wan#er executives running the place and running it poorly. A number of these tools have bounced between Skytrans, APNG, and Skytrans Mk2. They went bust and since 2013, which includes their partial resurrection by West Wing, they have had financial issues constantly, made people redundant, not secured contracts, had unreliable old clunker Dash 8’s and they’ve been through around 5 CEO’s. It’s a miracle that COVID hasn’t killed them off, again.
It was a once good airline. If I could turn the clock back somewhat I would be more than happy to fly for them again, pre the Wilds. However the shonky Wilds ruined a good airline but dreaming about becoming some kind of massive player in the aviation industry, and they broke the airlines back, but not before squirrelling many millions out the back door before she went bust.
Careful Epicurus, posts telling the truth about "Wild Air" tend not to last long here for some reason.
The above is sadly all true
I don't know many of the players in TryTrans Mk3 these days and I do wish Mr Milne & Co all the best.
Being there at the time I remember clearly when all this began. The original Skytrans being a mainly C404 operator, was going through growing pains and needed extra capacity on the CNS - AUR service. Their solution was to cross hire a QRA Dash8 in their livery to service the run, a very nice paint job it was too
The "Not So Wilds" headed up by Thick Minee in those days made their move and took over Skytrans, later re branding (IPA/QRA) to Skytrans as they had a far better reputation. First time in history that I can recall where a regional airline has rebranded in the name of a piston operator, such was (still is) the reputation of the Barnard's.
As for massive player delusions, not wrong. At one time the "plan" was to merge QRA with APNG to create some sort of North Queensland / Melanesian super carrier all the while tooled with same ex Sunnies old hundy series clunkers. What could possibly go wrong.
BAz
