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"