Seems Qantas are getting serious now. Does anybody know if any other F100 operaters in the region have lost pilot's to Network? This article was in yesterdays Australian.
Qantas adds 14 more aircraft to its fleet to meet rising demand in fly-in, fly-out market
QantasLink chief Narendra Kumar says he expects the aviation resources market to grow by 50-70 per cent over the next few years. Picture: Jane Dempster
Source: The Australian
Source: The Australian
QANTAS is aggressively accelerating its national push into the booming resources market, as regional carrier QantasLink and recently acquired charter unit Network Aviation add 14 aircraft over the next 12 months.
The airline may also consider committing bigger A320 or 737 size aircraft to fly-in, fly-out work if there is sufficient demand and says it expects interstate flying to become increasingly important to resources companies.
The new planes will bring the combined fleet to 80 aircraft, as QantasLink plans for double-digit expansion, fuelled by the combination of its Network expansion and the resources boom.
QantasLink executive manager Narendra Kumar, who also oversees Network, believes the aviation resources market will grow by 50-70 per cent over the next few years and says the timing of the latest addition to the Qantas stable leaves the group well placed to grab a healthy piece of the action.
The acquisition of planes last week introduced the first of 10 newly refurbished Fokker 100 jets into service, as Qantas ramps up efforts to boost its foothold in the burgeoning fly-in, fly-out market.
The planes are in addition to the airline's two existing F100s and six 30-seat Embraer 120 turboprops.
Another nine of the 100-seater twin-jets are due to enter service with Network over the next year, including two expected within the next month, with a fourth due in March-April and a fifth shortly afterwards.
Four of those planes are currently undergoing refits with Fokker Services in The Netherlands and the remaining five are set to change hands in March or April .
"So we can ramp it up or ramp it down as we feel necessary," Mr Kumar told The Australian. "But the key point is we've actually got our hands on 10 aircraft, five already in Holland and the other five with deposits made and contracts signed.
"So all 10 are definitely coming as opposed to speculation it was just a statement."
In the 12 months since Qantas acquired Perth-based Network, after prompting from some of its resource customers, it has spent considerable time looking at governance and management systems to ensure it is ready for the expected growth. This includes manpower, an area in which Mr Kumar said there had so far been no difficulties.
"Lindsay Evans and the team had obviously built a great business and we just wanted to make sure the scaling up of the organisation did not compromise anything from our perspective," he said, adding that this had included a network management framework to handle growth as well as regulatory and other approvals.
The airline and QantasLink both have Basic Aviation Risk Standard (BARS) accreditation, a safety audit system introduced by the Flight Safety Foundation to assure resources companies that the airlines they contract meet appropriate standards.
Mr Kumar said the F100s could have entered service earlier, but Qantas decided to upgrade cabins and update navigation systems to be ready for new satellite-based technology, ADS-B, which was being introduced in Australia and seen as essential to combating increasing congestion in mining areas. It also made sure all air service bulletins and airworthiness directives in the pipeline had been done in an effort to give the fleet a life of up to 10 years.
"As you can appreciate, the fly-in, fly-out work generally does 800 to 1200 hours a year, so we have a fleet that will come in, giving us a lot of life and capabilities," he said.
Having new planes and crews in place meant Network could bid aggressively for work, and several major contracts and tenders were currently in play, Mr Kumar said.
"Some of them are more advanced than others," he said.
"We have about two or three contracts that we have put in place across QantasLink and Network, large contracts, and there are quite a few RFP (requests for proposals) either at advanced stages or early stages.
"We don't expect to win every one of them, but the main approach was to make sure that we were able to meet the resource sector requirements, as opposed to not being able to bid because we didn't have the aircraft or crew or whatever.
"We are pretty confident that we will have a share of the market that will be available, both in terms of new contracts and new work that is coming in, as well as hopefully being able to bid for contracts as they come up for tender."
However, the QantasLink boss was cautious in estimating how much of the resources market the flying kangaroo will be able to snare.
He noted that a big contract could provide "a sizeable chunk of the market", but this was also possible through a series of small contracts.
Flexibility was the key and the company's offering was not confined to the F100s, although these would be the workhorses of the fly-in, fly-out operations.
The offering also included the smaller Network turboprop aircraft as well as QantasLink's Dash-8 fleet and its 115-seat 717s.
A Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 could also be put on the table if customers wanted a 150-seat aircraft, he said.
There had been no firm decision that all fly in, fly-out work had to go through Network, with QantasLink already doing "a stack" of work from major contracts already in place.
"At this time, it's fair to say it's pretty fluid," Mr Kumar said.
"All we know is that there will be demand, and based on the last few months of discussions and RFPs that have been put out to the market, we believe we'll be well placed to win our fair share of that.
"Whether it's 20, 30, 40 per cent remains to be seen."
While Western Australia would be an initial focus of Network's fly-in, fly-out push, Mr Kumar said the industry was also growing in other parts of Australia and Network could expand to other ports.
But he predicted that fly-in, fly-out destinations would increasingly be a function of where resource companies could source labour.
"As you know, we already have within our Qantas RPT (regular public transport) operations, services from Brisbane and Melbourne to ports such as Karratha," he said.
"Increasingly, I think, the sourcing of labour from states other than WA for WA work will grow as well. So, where we operate our fleet will be a function of where labour is sourced."
He said he would not be surprised if resource companies began sourcing labour from abroad, and the Qantas group was well placed to meet that requirement if it happened.
But the company was not interested at this stage in servicing overseas mines and its focus was primarily on the Australian market, although this could change in future.
Turning to QantasLink, Mr Kumar said the regional carrier would add two Queensland-based Boeing 717s and three Q400s turboprops this year, to bring its fleet to 62 aircraft.
Some of the growth has been underpinned by the resources sector, but the airline has also been establishing new routes and destinations over the past two years in South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.
It has added turboprops services to Western Australia and recently increased frequencies to Geraldton and Exmouth.
"Our capacity has been growing about 9 per cent per annum on a compound basis," Mr Kumar said.
"I think this year we'll probably go double-digit -- over 10 per cent is our current plan. It's not just putting capacity on existing routes but also developing new markets and new routes as well that, I think, has been important."
Mr Kumar acknowledged that the Virgin Australia-Skywest move into regional aviation would affect QantasLink but said focusing on market requirements and adding capacity to meet demand put his airline in a good position.
Having a high-frequency schedule in regional markets was useful, as was the airline's ability to introduce different size aircraft to match demand and give it the right capacity at times people wanted to travel.
The company's smarter, faster check-in was now available at QantasLink ports, giving customers a similar experience to that in major capital cities, and the airline was expanding its lounge network.
"You can't take your eye off the ball," he said. "And our focus is all about (not losing) sight of where we've come from and making sure the customer remains central to the offering that we promise."