The big guys QF and DJ could pull a 'dirty tricks' campaign to make their life difficult. CASA could give them a hard time with the old airplanes. The investors could get cold feet if it doesnt start on time. The business community might not see a bit of healthy enterprise as deserving of their support. These are the unknowns.
But, they seem to have a good team and a scrapper for a boss in Paul Stoddard. From all accounts he is a success story in his own right. He knows a bit about turning a buck with older machinery and is reputed to be real fussy about engineering. He has obviously already sunk a goodly amount of his own cash into this thing. So, are any of us here at this gossip site smarter than him? I reckon not. If we were, we would be richer.
Just because it did not work elsewhere probably means nothing in a local context as our business market is definitely under serviced since Ansett went down the toilet and QF dropped their service standards in the low cost war.
As for the definitely knowns - the 737 Guppy seems to be their choice to get it going, mainly because they already own them. This thing is about as good as any Boeing ever got before Airbus got the drop on them. The CFM 56 engine in the later 737 series is a very expensive thing to overhaul. In fact you can buy a good Guppy complete with heaps of engine time for less than the price of two CFM 56 overhauls. Guppy has simple systems, goes well even if it does guzzle fuel and lots of spares are available from the desert in Arizona. So if the engineering is done right why should it be unreliable? Plenty of them still flying in hostile places like Alaska, so they can't be unsafe or they would have crashed or been banned by now. And ya gotta love that crackle from the JT8D. None of that pussy whanging fan noise and it doesn't catch as many birds because it is smaller. When it does catch them it eats them a whole lot better too.