Thanks topend 3, I understand that some routes in regional WA are marginal. Routes such as Newman, Paraburdoo and Port Hedland, but Broome, Karratha and Kalgoorlie can sustain competition and to strengthen this theory the Dotrs have released reports to support this.
In the time imediately following the demise of Ansett, Skywest were 'actively encouraged' to get a jet asap by Woodside as they could see QF jacking prices into Karratha beyond their budgeted levels. Unfortunately for Skywest, the AN administrators would not approve the expenditure. (of any sort!)
As for competition in regional WA, former QF CEO James Strong was quoted in 1995 in saying that QF only introduced Airlink services into regional WA stop AN using excess profits on their eastern states trunk routes against QF, the same excess profits it seems will be used to fight Virgin off.
Is the traffic there to sustain competition? The aforementioned destinations chave the numbers, I would like to have seen the F100 service do the old AN392/3 run PER-BME-DWN, although Bridgey might have something to say against that.