Qantas to extend fly-in operations | The Australian
Steve Creedy From: The Australian December 29, 2010 12:00AM
QANTAS is seeking new Fokker 100 aircraft to boost its Perth-based fly-in, fly-out operation and has warned rivals it is planning expansion.
The airline paid about $30 million for Network Aviation this month and sees it as a strategic addition to its portfolio of businesses.
It intends to take the business beyond Western Australia and is looking at potential growth opportunities such as defence charters.
Central to this will be the expansion of Network's fleet of two 100-seat Fokker 100 jet aircraft and six 30-seat Embraer turboprops.
"We're actively looking at a large number of aircraft," Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said. "We didn't buy Network just to keep it the same size; we bought that with the potential to grow that massively over the next few years."
Mr Joyce said Qantas had attempted to get into charter work in its own right but the aircraft in its fleet were too expensive to be left sitting around waiting for charter opportunities.
He said Network was a good venture for Qantas because of its presence in Western Australia and its infrastructure at Perth's congested airport.
He said the F100s were the aircraft of choice for the FIFO market and were operated by Alliance Airlines and Skywest.
"They're aircraft the fly-in/fly-out market is actually used to," he said. "There are plenty of aircraft available out there and the aircraft have a low capital cost. So when you're talking about low utilisation the business model makes sense."