great news for carbridge, [bus company] they are picking up contracts left right and centre for perth domestic & international

Jets use aerobridges

turboprops make people walk

Ahhhh I remember walking to AN BAe 146 a while ago now..... the good old days where I was alot handsomer!1!!

Virgin the cherry pickers
 

Virgins foray into intra WA is a good fit for the Embraers but i was surprised they chose newman and Karatha first. I would have thought the markets of Albany, Esperence, Broome etc are more lucrative but as someone said in earleir posts, these markets may have competition restrictions, if so then clearly skywest?QF are giving commission on their monopolistic routes to WA govt

I read the VB interest in PNG and I also saw their interest in starting Perth- Sth Africa flights. My guess is the cherry picking will continue of Qantas monopolies/duopoloies.

If you think about it QF has virtual monopolies/duopolies on most routes outside of Asia. QF also operate most of their international flights out of Sydney. VB will continue to cherry pick and I guess some will succeed and some will fail. I reckon they have more chance of succeeding if they focus on international outbound from airports other than Sydney.

Bali is booming at the moment with Australian visitor numbers almost back at pre bali Bomb 1 levels. If VB or one of their subsidiaries do establish flights on these routes then the timing will be interesting when you consider that Bali Bombers are about to be executed....will the terrorists strike again in Bali?

Virgin Blue cannot cherry pickers on the WA routes as according to Western Australian toursim there are protected routes....

Albany / Esperance / Exmouth??? / Geraldton are all closed along with Leinter, Leornora, Laverton, Mount Magnet

All Jet routes are open to competetion......

DJ will and continue to cherry pick the best routes from Qantas, though I dont fly to SA anymore any new competetion would be great out of perth.... A340-200 just dont do me! :(:(

word is that dj are about to pick up some of xr's newman contract work and that xr will reduce services to newman. this will certainly make dj's services more viable. it will also allow xr to deploy those aircraft to more lucrative routes or to use them as rescue aircraft for every second day when they have a breakdown...indeed their reliability on some of their charter/RPT routes to the north has been shocking.

As an atc, the last thing we need is more traffic in and out of those places. Broome etc is a frigen nightmare, we have all the helicopters/ coastwatch/QFA/ skywest/ everything basically going in and out.

I don't know how the crews do it sometime, i feel for them when I flood them with the required traffic and they are in the ctaf.

we do the best we can with what we've got, and it ain't much. I personally don't really like watching jets pass outside controlled airspace nose to nose and watching 8 aircraft going in and out of one aerodrome uncontrolled.

Wa Base
 

Hi all!

Very intrigued into the expansion of DJ into wa. for those people who already work at DJ, is there talk there of a Perth base for cabin crew? If so, will it all be done internally, how many do u think will go to PER? I would come home from abu dhabi to be in the perth base in a second!

anyways cheers for any news!!!

safe flying!

Expressions of Interest out for Tech Crew for the Perth Base. Only Embraer. It would not make any sense to not have a CC base as well.
The wheels move slowly sometimes in VB, unfortunately the TC and CC wheels also move at different rates. Get you application in at the very least as the positions would be advertised internally first.

ozziecrew,

Yes, there will be a cabin crew base in Perth for the Embraer operation.

Virgin can go to any of these places in a jet if they choose. I think you will find the demand for travel is up north not down south.

Neville Nobody wrote:

I dont think they can, according to this document:

http://www.dpi.wa.gov.au/mediafiles/...eviewintro.pdf

An excerpt from the above document:

Regulated routes and airports: As result of the 2002 and 2004 Reviews, two regulated route networks were created (Coastal and Northern Goldfields) and licensed for commercial operation to 31 December 2008 through a competitive tender process, along with one regulated route. Subject to the outcome of this review, the Minister may reissue licences to the incumbent airlines operating those networks for a further two years and continue the licensing arrangements on the regulated route. A third network that is both regulated and subsidised by the State has a contract to operate to 1 July 2008 with an option for a 12 month extension.

The Coastal Network consists of the following regulated airports: Albany, Carnarvon, Esperance, Exmouth (Learmonth), Geraldton, Kalbarri, and Shark Bay. The Northern Goldfields Network consists of the following regulated airports: Geraldton (limited access), Laverton, Leinster, Leonora, Mt. Magnet, Meekatharra, and Wiluna. The regulated route is Perth to Derby (Curtin).

Skywest pull out of Newman effective 27 Oct. They maintain 1 x F50 charter per week and have lost their McMahon contract work to Virgin Blue...

About time!!

hahahaha :} unfortunately it is!

Interesting they went double daily but it'll work, PERFECT for people coming up for the day for business reasons etc.

Also there are ALOT of people that have to pay for their own fares as fly in fly out so they will fly Virgin Blue.

Hell i've booked a few flights with them, $378 return....who could complain? compared to Qantas which is atleast $450 return.

Was suprised especially with XR now flying here once on Tuesdays, twice on Wednesdays and with their little codeshare thing with DJ but then again XR has a contract.

Virgin will have no problem picking up some sort of contract and the public wont hesitate to fly them as it's cheaper and now gives us another choice in the afternoon to fly to Perth.

Been good for Karratha lately, Qantas going twice weekly to Brisbane, and the 2 days they fly are VERY convenient for Fly in Fly out workers as most start Wednesdays and finish Thursday mornings.

XR going to 2 flights on Wed's

And Virign going double daily Mon-Fri and once a day on Sat/Sun.

The demand is there so glad we finally have some competition and hopefully we may see fares drop a little. Qantas just rape us, $1200 return around Xmas compared to Virigns $408 on the same dates.

Once the new runway is open, it's been rumoured Rio Tinto and Woodside will sign deals with an airline (obviously QF/DJ) to fly KTA-SYD, KTA-MEL and KTA-ADL for their fly in fly out work force, to save on costs and to save "Fatigue" as it's playing a huge effect especially those who finish a 6am on a Thurs and then don't arrive in Sydney till 10pm. Will be interesting to see what develops anyway. Also once complete the KTA-BNE leg wont be weight restricted.


Very very happy!! :D

Also as has been said, DJ cant just fly anywhere in WA. Most airports have ridiculous competition limitations and are only allowed certain amount of flights and certain aircraft hence why no one is flying to Geraldton other than XR. Which would be another good destination, but not sure if the E190 would be allowed to fly the route.

Not quite true. Skippers and Skywest were both allowed to operate Geraldton but Skippers pulled out because why go head to head on RPT when you can half fill a Bras on a contract run and get paid for the WHOLE aircraft.

Learmonth (Exmouth) is interesting. The regulation relates to NON JET ROUTES. Skywest run the F100 up there so DJ should be allowed to put on an E Jet. The whole regulated routes thing is rubbish anyway and if someone went to the federal court to challenge it they would certainly have a good chance of having it ruled unlawful as it breaches competion policy - restriction of trade. Aviation is Aus is Federally legislated so the states really should not be regulating anyway. The only reason no one has challenged the rules is that it suits Skippers and Skywest to have a cosy little duopoly...two airline agreement anyone?

:hmm:

Jetracer those routes are protected turboprop routes.

So you can't start going there in a turbo prop. Bring a Jet and there is no restriction.

Thats not quiet the way I understand it Nev.

The turbo prop routes are regulated and you can not fly RPT in anything on those routes (GEL excepted having provisions for competition).

Jet routes are not regulated so DJ or anybody else can operate into Newman, Karratha ect.

I beleive XR looked at putting the 100 onto the GEL run a few years ago, but that would of become a 'JET' route and therefore opening it to competition.

Maybe this will clear up some ambiguity;

As per the above post,




There is no reference to jet or turboprop preference except in the original review in 03'/04' where it states;

Offer Skywest Airlines a two-year exclusive licence to operate
services from Perth to Carnarvon, Exmouth, Albany and Esperance,
subject to providing ongoing services for Leinster and Leonora and

acceptable service standards and fare structures.

and

Jet route services between Perth and Kalgoorlie, Port Hedland, Karratha and Broome would not be subject to any competition restraint.

I don't think this is a co-incidence pilotdude, i think woodside buy blocks of seats on this service....

Prediction: Jet service for YGEL
 

Wonder how long GEL will remain a "turboprop" port once construction of the new radio telescope array begins?

www.ska.gov.au

Predictions are that astronomy students alone will account for 1,500 visits to YGEL per annum.

Not everything big is related to digging iron ore out of the ground!

Hardly works out to be a marginal increase of 6pax a day.........

An extra rotation with a FK50 will do, otherwise it will fill up the already vacant seats

It doesnt indicate that people might be driving up their themselves....

on the subject of the F50 these tired machines must surely be up for replacement soon, they first came into the AN fleet in the mid-80's and they have dubious reliability of late...

Sufficient to support VB's E-Jets, which no doubt will be deployed over the Geraldton and Albany routes early next year. That should set the Cat among the Pigeons :)

dude, DJ cannot operate their gets into Geraldton & Albany as these routes are closed for competetion :ugh::ugh::ugh:

Topend,

Alliance just took delivery a few months ago of I think 2 new F50's for their Adelaide Base...

They dont look to bad, and apparantly are a good fly, however I Imagine the costs would certianly be getting up wouldnt they?

Those FK50's that Alliance brought were the upgraded FK-50-300's? later build early 90's airframe with more powerful engines, payload range etc

As said before I think the restrictions are on turboprops Also I think you will find the restrictions are coming off the Gero run as they have passed their quota of passengers travelled.

as far as I know, as long as their is a turboprop on the these routes no - one else can come in for competetion...

Albany is turboprop - so no jet?
Geraldton is turboprop - so no jet?

these are protective routes by the government

So at the moment DJ is Newman & Karratha or am i missing something>?

Ahh I didnt know that skystar,

So they would probably be more efficient? and should run for another say 10 years?

or would an update still be needed? I'd imagine so if fuel costs rose again..

The loads on the F50's are good, however you have to remember that Xr's F50's are 46/48 seat config. Maybe two flights a day to GEL are full, the rest have half loads or less. The communities at the moment even though they tend to winge and bitch, they do like the frequency of the services(7 a day to GEL). If a larger jet was to operate, then the frequency would reduce.
The big question is,
What load factor does Virgin require to make these routes worth while?
Xr's Fokkers do not require large load factor's to make a profit, also keep in mind it's only a 200nm sector.

JarJar

If they sent say the Embraer 170 in there, you need to fill at least 62% to break even (based on running costs, and according to their data on Embraer's website)

However it is unrealistic to think that it would happen, so they flights would only... "Possbily" work if they only flew say Monday Return Service, and a Friday Return Service...

I cant see the plane filling for them to do it everyday...

Embraer Commercial Jets

Skystar

Yes! You're missing something! Route protection expires in December this year, with extensions, March 09. It is not very likely that there will be route protection beyond that as the argument for it is simply no longer there and even if there is, it's almost certain that both Geraldton and Albany will not be included.

Both DJ's (E-jets) and QF's (Q-400) submissions are likely to be more attractive than XR's F50's

Geraldton has "never" been protected from a Jet Service.

That I didn't know when the contract expires......

GET has limited competetion as it may handle it...

Will be interesting to see what happens to those contracts!

After reading the DPI document it seems as though jet competition is only unrestrained to the major ports and routes listed, this is services between Perth and Kalgoorlie, Port Hedland, Karratha and Broome.

The document is very long winded but i could not find any reference to jet/turboprop bias.

Geraldton only just crossed the threshold of 55000 (2003-04') pax per year to allow limited, staged competition. There is nothing stating whether the competition is jet or not, there is a tender process and an operator is granted exclusive rights (props, jets or whetever). Currently the system is under review with the two main regions to expire in december, it was reviewed in 2003-04 and decided to continue with periodic reviews.

Being tender based with an emphasis on sustainable air services it would be understandable that the ports look as if they are turboprop only but maybe thats because props offer the lowest operational cost per seat.

Well! I guess it's all a mute point anyway if the Liberal Party win Government. We'll know soon enough!!

I cant recall if this is true or not,

but wouldnt that airport need to be upgraded? mainly the security?

When Jet Aircraft are going in to an airport, the passengers need to be screened yeah?

100 passenger seats or more whether that many seats are fitted or not.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh ok..

Dont Mildrua have to upgrade due to DJs EJets comming in?

XR's F50's.
 

It does seem that XR are flying these F5O's to the limit. One does have to ask why they have not announced any plans for upgrading these aircraft. Perhaps they know they have only have a limited time left on the protected routes and very soon they will be opened up to other carriers. They seem to be riding on the crest of the boom wave and not really investing in the core WA rpt sector.

"A Limited Time Indeed"