Skywest to Kal-Boulder to MEL/ADL??

[pilotdude09]

Howdy guys,
Was chatting to someone today and they were saying the XR is planning to fly to the East coast from KAL. Apparntley only ADL or MEL is being considered and they were securing more a/c.
Could be a good thing i guess, make it easier for FIFO workers to get to KAL.
And wheres to "planed" A320's gone? :ugh:

[topend3]

PRESS RELEASE

27/07/07


Skywest announces expansion.

Skywest Airlines announced today that it has secured a further two Fokker 100 jets adding to the company’s existing Perth based fleet of ten jet and propjet aircraft.

Skywest Managing Director, Hugh Davin advised that the aircraft will bring the company’s jet fleet up to five 100 seaters. “These aircraft are essential to the growth of our airline and resource sector support activities”, Mr Davin said.

Skywest CEO, Paul Daff advised that the delivery program was still being worked through with the first of the two aircraft expected to enter service in late September followed by the second in November. A sixth jet is on the agenda for early 2008.

“Once a delivery date has been confirmed, the airline will be in the position to announce increased services and additional routes, including a firm start date for the much anticipated Kalgoorlie to East Coast service,” Mr Daff said.

Mr Daff went on to say that the announcement was great news for the WA market and that the leasing of these additional aircraft facilitated exciting growth for Skywest Airlines.


End of Media Release.

I think the planned A320 acquisition has been put on hold.

[boocs]

Good luck to them!!

NJS used to do this on the 146, but were taking pax from the PER-ADL/MEL run from mainline and of course were told to stop! We can't have the passengers having direct flights now can we....

b.

[chad sexington]

The option then, is a 45 minute flight to Perth to connect with wherever, or a flight to Adelaide and then a connection.
Back when NJS did it the majority of people did not want to go to Adelaide so it just became another stop on the way to your destination.
I think KG-ML could do well but unless you can offer direct flights to major ports I don't see the advantage.
Good luck regardless.

[topend3]

i think they would need some corporate support to make it viable. as you say all of the qf accounts will take a lot to sway that flying direct in an F100 is any advantage.

[cunninglinguist]

Good luck with ML - KG, unless you r using F100ER :}
( its only 1200 odd Nm's with a 40kt/ summer - 140 kt/ winter, headwind )
GS 320kts, INTER KG, does the dutchy carry that much fuel??

Of course, those 320s XR got in November last year will p1ss it in :}

[outback aviator]

I have been on one when it went perth - kunnas in the wet and it went direct so I guess it does.

[Brasilian Bird]

unless you r using F100ER :}

XR have the only F100 ERs on the West Coast, Alliance stuffed up letting those go!!! :} Understand they're quite hard to come by these days...!

[cunninglinguist]

I have been on one when it went perth - kunnas in the wet and it went direct so I guess it does

Mate, the 146-300 can do PH - KU , its mostly t/wind up, h/wind back ( and not normally > 60 kts hwc ) and wet or not does'nt matter ( unless inter or tempo on ).
In winter we occasionally struggled to do AD-KG ( not ML-KG ), could'nt physically carry enough gas.
I think ML-KG about another 380 NMs ?

Happy to be corrected ( as always :E ) but think u will find ML-KG significantly longer than PH-KU ( plus the > 100 hwc more than 1/2 the year )

Bras, how much gas those " ERs " hold :confused:

[XRlent100]

ML-KG not much further than PH-KU

ML-KG is 1230 nm while
PH-KU is 1198 nm so only 30miles different which is pretty insignificant.

You are correct on the headwind though. Will be a challenge when winds are high. I would be surprised if they haven't allowed some fat in the system for a tech stop at Adel for the trip west on those occasions. AD-KG is only 960odd nm's so no challenge at all.

The HGW 100's (High Gross Weight) that XR operate can uplift 10.7 tonnes quite easily with 100 pax.

Last year an F100 went ML-PH direct with 100 pax for the AFL grand final so ML-KG should be within range on most occasions.

[Jose Cuervo]

I once did DN to PH in a F100, 60 kt headwinds, landed with just over 2.5 tonnes of gas in the tanks. Admittedly there was no weather in PH.

DN to PH is about 1430 nm.

F100 is THE West Aussie regional airliner :)

[pilotdude09]

Just a random Q....

The F100 does Broome to Bali so how far is that? and does that require ETOPS?

Prob a stupid question but ill ask anyway :}

[Jose Cuervo]

Not a stupid question at all....

Skywest fly Port Hedland to Bali, total route distance 760nm.

Etops not required as they they don't fly in a direct line, rather to a waypoint which keeps them within 345nm of an adequate airport at all times.

[boocs]

AN did BRM-Bali in de 146 4 a while (of course ETOPS stuff doesn't count with a 4 eng blowdryer) but from memory t'was only a 2-2.5 hr flite.

Wot was dat silly ting on de GPS we had 2 do in BRM??

b.

[XRlent100]

Funny thing is Bali is actually closer to Broome and Port Hedland than they are to Perth. Makes you realise how big W.A. is or how small the world really is.

Flight time from PD to Bali is 1hr 50min. If Broome had a full time permanent International Airport (may be happening soon with Silkair) than the flight from Broome to Bali would only be about 1hr 40min.

As Jose said, Skywest aircraft are non ETOPS and hence track via a position 15S 119E.

Cheers

[Capn Bloggs]

I once did DN to PH in a F100, 60 kt headwinds, landed with just over 2.5 tonnes of gas in the tanks. Admittedly there was no weather in PH.


Big deal. How many pax did it have on board?

[topend3]

Mate, the 146-300 can do PH - KU
cunnilinguist, the 146-300 used to call into NWN on the way back to take fuel, it never did KU-PH non-stop, only PH-KU.

the F100's often stop at NWN for fuel ex KU if there is INTER or TEMPO at PH.

[Capn Bloggs]

it never did KU-PH non-stop, only PH-KU.

Wrong :=. Even the -200s did PH-KU on occasions before the schedule was changed to a permanent KNX-ZNE-PER. The reason for this was because QF insisted on filling the aircraft up (with SLF) out of KNX, making the direct flight dodgy a lot of the time. It also meant QF could pick up a few extra pax at ZNE southbound. Had QLink actually used -300s at the start of KNX services, direct flights would have been more the norm.

Ansett regularly did KNX-PER direct in a crappy old 146-200 by limiting the number of seats and taking off at a reasonable time of the day (and using pannier tank aircraft).

[XRlent100]

"the F100's often stop at NWN for fuel ex KU if there is INTER or TEMPO at PH."

It's not because of INTER or TEMPO's on PH but because KU is only 1800m long and with a full load out of KU the fuel load is then limited. As Bloggs said, if the company limited seats out of KU it'd be an easy flight.

With ML being twice the runway length the only thing stopping F100's going ML-KG direct will be the headwinds that you don't get on a KU-PH flight.

The only thing similar between KU-PH and ML-KG is the sector length. The departure runways are totally different and the headwinds are alot stonger coming across from ML.

[cunninglinguist]

Thanks Bloggsy.
TE3, can show u copy of log book if you like, and it was more than once :}

Also the XR boys should'nt have fuel carrying problems, even with the might of the QF res system, onloads, FF, and flight availability once they got to the east coast ( or in NJS's case, AD ), the loads where seldom better than a 146-100 could carry, also we were carrying FFs out of PH through KG to AD.
Sure, there were times we could have used a bit bigger A/C, but I reckon averaged out over a year, I would be surprised if > 50 pax/sector.

PS: XRlent, is ML-KG an ETOPS sector ? ML-PH definitely is. ( and yes, I know you can go further north to fix this but will increase trk miles )

[XRlent100]

Cunning, Not sure if ML-KG is an ETOPS sector. Probably is, and may indeed increase the track miles. May even push XR aircraft further north into even stronger headwinds. Someone else may know. As i mentioned previously, I'm sure that the powers that be will have scheduled in a tech stop in case the winds are to strong on a particular day.

Have you considered since NJS were doing KG-ML that there's been a huge mining boom in W.A. Just take a look at the FIFO work around W.A. at the moment and the different types of A/C they are using. KG is one of the towns that has been affected by this boom.

Cheers

[pilotdude09]

Cool thanks guys on the Bali Question :)

Strange how close it really is to the WA coast, if only Karratha offered international flights, im sure the Bali flight would do alright as every man and his dog goes to Bali except me.
Would like to go but dont wanna go. Rather go round Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

Actually if XR did get A320's and offered international flights from Hedland and Broome to Asia they would do pretty well of them even if they were only 1 x weekly.