JETGO from Wollongong
 

JETGO have added flights to Wollongong from Melbourne Essendon and Brisbane to their booking engine.

MEB-WOL (first flight 31 October)
Twice daily on Mon, Wed, Fri and Sun
Once daily on Tuesday and Thursday (no flights Sat)

BNE-WOL (first flight 23 November)
Once daily (except Tues, Sat)

Cheapest fare on both routes is $155.

It looks like a solid effort, after a long time without any RPT flights to Wollongong (Qantaslink pulled out on Friday, July 18 2008). It will be interesting to see if is a strong enough offering to be sustainable.

The Wollongong flights have disappeared from their booking engine - maybe they've changed minds!

How is that not surprising

Booking engine is now back up - all flights are now only $119. Get in quick!

FALSE START: Flights from Hervey Bay to Melbourne delayed
 

JUST one week out from launching Hervey Bay's first direct flight to Melbourne, airline Jetgo has confirmed it is canning the long awaited service.

All flights booked for the next three months will be cancelled and customers refunded. Jetgo's Managing Director Paul Bredereck said the company had no choice but to make the tough decision after the new service failed to attract enough bookings to make the route sustainable through the winter months. He said the company was looking at the unprecedented set back as a "delayed start" and planned to try again in Spring. "The response has been softer than expected," Mr Bredereck said. "We're holding off until the beginning of October."

Sounds a lot like the much-hyped Roma-Sydney service a couple of years ago.

Hes blaming the people of Hervey Bay for not wanting to go south because its to cold.
But its whale season up their and southerners flock to the warmer climate this time of the year.

As one who watched Impulse come - and vanish - from Wollongong, then watched Qantas come - and vanish - from Wollongong, I can't help this feeling of deja vu with the proposed services.

The fares announced are (in my view) unsustainable. They'd need to be triple that to keep the service running, and I doubt the numbers will stack up in terms of passenger liftings anyway. If the fares increase to what I think they ought to be, passenger liftings will plummet.

I used to count the heads getting on and off the Qantas Dash-8s on occasions, and although the aircraft were not full, I figured they were probably breaking even, and making a profit on quite a few of the morning flights. Well over half the seats were occupied on the evening flights I observed. So why did Qantas abandon the route?

One suggestion is when the Dash-8 100 series were sold, Qantas simply didn't have an aircraft that was legal for the runway (was the Dash-8 200 series overweight for runway 16/34?) and they pulled the pin because obtaining exemptions for each flight just got too hard. Now if someone knows the real reason, I'd love to hear it, but that made sense to me at the time and it still does. Like as as not it was a combination of adverse factors, not just one, but lacking a suitable aircraft was significant.

What is also significant is Rex have ignored Wollongong on their Syd-Merimbula route (which also takes in Moruya). The SAAB 340 is no issue for YWOL, so why isn't it on that route? Is it because Wollongong is just a shade too close to Sydney to make it viable? I've never run an airline so I have limited knowledge of the complexities of route-determination and pricing, but some things seem to be fairly obvious.

So Jetgo will come - and go - and eventually YWOL will become what it is today. Meanwhile, all those at YWOL who didn't bother renewing their ASICs will have a headlong rush to get them when the RPT starts up again, and the ASIC issuing bodies will rub their hands together with the preditable surge in business. Any of the HARS airside guys who don't have one will need to get their applications under way fairly soon, as the HARS area and the RPT area are very close together. I assume most of the HARS guys have an ASIC already.

Shellharbour Council have always had this dream of RPT at YWOL, but ultimately it is a case of not enough bums reliably on the seats, and just a bit too close to YSSY. I give Jetgo six months before they become Jetgone as far as Wollongng is concerned...but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

Fairly pessimistic outlook criticalmass...
With Wollongong being Australias 10th largest city and 80km from KSA or well over a 1 hour 15 minute drive, it has amazed me that the likes of REX have not jumped at Albion Park
Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast are both 100k from Brisbane and just 1 hour away and although they are touristy destinations, each support huge passenger numbers
Even Wellcamp is supporting multi-daily flights to Melbourne and Sydney

I think Jetgo will have great success on both routes with exactly the right sized aircraft for the routes and will likely end up 2-3 times daily on each route

Here's why
1) Those getting international connections will likely save money, even with the JetGo fare as there is greater discounting at Brisbane and Melbourne than Sydney
2) Those traveling from the Gong to Brisbane or Melbourne have a greater chance of making it to the airport on time at Albion Park
3) Albion park avoids the F6 M1 and often hours of fun and games and fog etc

JetGo just needs to keep in mind 2 things
1) keep flights on time
2) keep fares reasonable

The rest will take care of itself

Simple rule of thumb is that you need $100/seat to get off the blocks to cover all of the things behind the scenes and costs to that point then an hourly rate to operate the aircraft and divided by expected pax load plus a margin. Without that you're not covering costs.

It's cheaper to go broke on the ground than in the air!

I think Qlink pulled the pin as they were retiring the aircraft, but also as Bluescope reduced its flying due to losing money.

International connections won't help looking st Melbourne as they fly to Essendon not Tullamarine, not sure how the times work out in Brisbane.

As much as it tries Wollongong is not a major tourist destination such as the Gold Coast. I'm sure Jetgo will be looking at Wollongong major industries to fill seats, such as the Uni and bluescope,though many of those users like frequency and lounge access.

I do wish the luck and I hope success but I agree that I think in 12 months they will be Jetgone

Wise words indeed.

Southbank Aviation couldn't make this work with a C421 35 years ago, when BHP were booming and their head office was in Melbourne.

Am I the only one who thinks that there does not appear to be a solid business plan behind some of these route proposals?

Realistic I would say, despite all the stats history says expect 1-5 pax on average most days.

Some of their routes seem to be fairly solid
Tamworth , Dubbo , Albury and Wagga along with Goldy Rocky Townsville

I think that their biggest problems are
They are not found on the likes of Webjet
They are not really set up and well known enough for infrequent tourists
They tend to target smaller towns travelers heading to citys, which is fine, but they need to have a big lead in time as lots of pax would have booked in advance
Hub busting works well, but there is a need for affiliation with VA or QF take for example Air North Wellcamp services for an example
They tend not to launch new routes with daily services, this is important as a traveler who wishes to book with JetGo and, for example, can't get the return leg on their day of choosing, will likely just book the one stop alternative with QF or VA for both legs

JetGo would be better to look at multi-leg services, rather than origin, destination services

Example
Cairns-Maroochydore-Canberra-Hobart
Cairns-Newcastle-Hobart
Adelaide-Newcastle-Maroochydore-Townsville

Much better chances of bums on seats for 1-2 sectors rather than eg. Melbourne to Port Maq which should have continued on to Gold Coast, Rockhampton and Townsville

Look at how Brisbane Dubbo Melbourne has been doing

Even their new route Albury-Gold Coast could have been
Melbourne-Albury-Gold Coast-Rockhampton-Townsville

IMO :-)

This mob would have as much hope affiliating themselves with the local McDonald's let alone Qantas or Virgin.

Why would anyone codeshare with them? Just let them go broke instead and the rest is history. Worked well for Air Australia.

You forgot to add
They are unreliable

to be found on any search engine site, like Webjet, who charge a booking fee, airline needs to be hosted in a GDS(global distribution system or CRS computer res system SAME THING) & these are very expensive. Most airlines have to pay everytime a booking is made, whether it's finalised or not. So bookings made that are then cancelled before a ticket is issued, still cost the airline, in most cases. Some bigger airlines might have these fees reduced, but for small airlines, the price is prohibitive.

Fly Corporate have done so using Hahn Air: "New Australian airline Fly Corporate enters the GDS world under H1 code".

I have no idea of the cost but you would think that it is a fairly fundamental business requirement for a RPT operator of Jetgo's ambition.

Just from my anecdotal evidence, the demographics of Illawarra and the Shoalhaven area have drastically changed in the last 5-10 years. There are lots of people in their late 20's and early 30's moving to Wollongong and commuting to Sydney for work as well as cashed up retirees in their 50's and 60's selling up in Sydney and moving south because property prices are less than half the price of Sydney. Not only that, developers are building large land subdivisions and apartments like crazy in the Illawarra too. The population is growing big time.

As long as Jetgo sell the flights at a price that works out to be similar to catching a flight from Sydney (including travel costs to get to Sydney airport), I reckon flights from Wollongong may succeed this time.

You're forgetting about the time spent getting from Wollongong to Sydney & potential delays on roads, train or however you get there.

What might be a 90 minute trip most days, means you have to allow 150 minutes or more & just getting through security at SYD can take a while cf. Albion Park.

Who really wants to spend 5 hours getting to SYD & back ?

Bit like BNE & OOL. There are some crazy cheap airfares out of OOL, like OOL/SIN on Scoot for $88 to $129 one way on new 787's inc all taxes. OOL/ZQN/OOL on JQ for $200 inc all taxes which must add up to $170 + Air Asia have regular sales, BUT many of these flights depart OOL early like 0600, so it means people in BNE might have to get up at 0200, leave to drive by 0300 to arrive by 0430 with 30 minutes up their sleeve. Some will do it, the price shopper maybe, but many won't. The Tiger/Jetstar market are not Jetgo's market.

Jetgo seem to have about 5 fare buckets. The cheapest fares BNE/ABX were $179 originally & were available on all flights. Think they started with 3 or 4 a week. Now they seem to fly BNE/ABX daily & the sale price is $189, when they have sales. So it seems people will pay a lot more to fly in a jet nonstop, rather than a turbo prop to SYD & stuff around at awful SYD. You'd have to wonder if apparent Jetgo success on this route will lead to the likes of Virgin putting on an Alliance F70 or F100 on the route ?

Are Jetgo using their larger aircraft on BNE/ABX ?

WTF? Why are Australians always so pathetically unsupportive of innovation and people with at least the gumption to give stuff a go?

Take this miserable gem from Papa Jo: This mob would have as much hope affiliating themselves with the local McDonald's let alone Qantas or Virgin.
Why would anyone codeshare with them? Just let them go broke instead and the rest is history. Worked well for Air Australia.

Unbelievable.

I'll certainly be travelling with them. You can spend 30mins just trying to get into SYD these days by car, and that frustration is before the exorbitant parking costs kick-in.

Good luck Jetgo!

I really hope this works out for JetGo. Surely the Illawarra 's burgeoning population is enough to sustain this.

how do you get from BNE to either OOL or MCY ? Do you have a porsche 911 turbo & drive fast at 2am, with no concern for speed limit ?

Don't think you'll be able to thru connect bags eg. flying Gong to MEL then international.

now that the real estate market has totally collapsed, it's more about the awful state of the economy than anything else.

BNE - MCY is all motorway at 100-110k, outside peak hour it is legally doable in just over 1 hour
BNE-OOL is also all motorway at 100-110k, outside peak hour it is legally doable in just over 1 hour
Gong-KSA is a lesser distance, however, about 1/2 the journey is main roads that average about 30km per hour, thus the extra travel time up to 90 minutes outside peak

With a local option for Wollongong, it makes no sense to drive 90 minutes each way, then pay ridiculously high parking charges and then deal with KSA to save $30-$50 a seat and on top of that run the risk of one accident or breakdown having you miss your flight

If JetGo were to scheduled their flights at 7.00am-10.00am or 4.00pm-7.00pm this would make them even more attractive as traveling to and from Sydney at these times would be at least a 2 hour trip

Drive BNE/OOL every week & BNE/MCY twice a week & you're nuts if you think you can do either in less than 90 mins, esp MCY with all the roadworks from BNE to Bruce hwy.

Good friend of mine drives daily Acacia Ridge to Kunda Park (Maroochydore) daily in a 12T truck speed limited to 100k and does the trip in 1 hour 20 minutes except if there are any incidents
9/10 trips are 1 hour 20 minutes or less

Depending where in Brisbane you start from, you can do the trip in under 1 hour from the north side on a good day

Been looking to buy in Qld for a while, barring Moranbah, where has it collapsed?
You trot this out pretty often.

are you serious ? eg. There's a major glut of units in Brisbane. Many people are now buying heavily reduced units rather than houses, which is driving down the price of houses.

Lots of units hitting rental market, also means drop in yields for houses & units. A drop in yields basically means the houses/units are worth less to an investor, who bases the purchase price on what ROI they can get. Same thing to a lesser extent in SYD & MEL. If you believe the rubbish in the media, you're a bit silly. Remember the media earns many billions a year in real estate advertising & the media will try & talk it up, even when interest rateas rise a lot.

We buy & sell a lot of real estate. Last 12 months sold a lot. Now making many rough offers & some are being accepted. Start at 50% of asking price.

Bank repos are increasing as well.

Anyone who has bought a unit in the centre of Brissie in the last few years needed their head read, looming oversupply was pretty obvious.
A bit of a glut is hardly the world falling apart. Immigration will sort it out in good time.
The houses I am looking at have increased in price over the last year, quality wins in the end.

A valuation is not a sale.

Standard real estate salesmen line ...

your house will sell for $2m

Oh the market has tightened/crashed, you'll have to take $1.5m now, (quickly so I get my huge commission)

Banks are tightening up/rental yields are dropping/Chinese tightening up on funny money leaving the country. I'd say we're in for a massive recession.

It seems anyone under about 45 years of age, can't remember the last recession.

The worse places to buy right now are SYD, MEL, BNE in that order, unless you can buy at the right price. Anyone who pays asking price now is a fool & will get burnt badly.

Yes, you KEEP saying it on EVERY thread.

Nocookies | The Australian

They do not raise rates as we enter a recession do they?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-1...inutes/8719438

Dollar surges as the WORLD but not BNEA320, factors in rate rises.

Pfft, what would the RBA know? Travel agents are the ones who really have their finger on the pulse.

BNEA320/XPT, is it difficult to keep track of which username you're posting under?

wow you don;t get it do you ? Have you ever been through a recession? We have to have one. Growth has to end.

Its started. If you can't see it, you read too much crap in the newspapers who are trying to sell stuff, like overpriced real estate. musical chairs !!! Just don't be the last mug punter left or you'll be stuffed.

Have you read about all the real estate that didn't sell & vendors pulled it off the market. NO, cos the media doesn't want to report about that.


Think about this. Units sold off the plan for $1m with 10% deposit. On completion they are worth $800k or less probably. No one would be stupid enough to finalise on those figures, so they'll walk & there will be many developments like this in SYD, MEL & already in BNE & a glut of units, with all the developers taking anything they can get. (ok they got to keep the 10% deposit, but they will have to sell them at BIG discounts to move them)

As usual BNE320, expert on most things, only is looking at the apartment market. Try buying something nice in New Farm. Prices in good suburbs are going up...

no everything is crashing. If people can get cheap apartments they will buy one rather than a house. Doesn't take much of a drop in demand to turn it into a buyers market. Have been involved in buying & selling real estate since just before the big crash in 1974, when many houses sold for 1/2 asking price. Paid for my retirement at 40. Anyone under 35 years, seems to have no idea of how a recession works.

Aviation is my new game.

Jetgo are flying an Embraer jet down to land at YWOL today for a media event. Winds are forecast westerly 15 to 25 kts. Not sure what the maximum crosswind for their jets is, but they will only be able to use runway 34/16 as they are overweight for 26/08.

Could be an interesting landing, or if it's too difficult, a few attempts and then head for home?

Yes I do.

Yes.

No.

Possibly.

You keep using apartments sales and a general real estate downturn to argue we are in recession. We are not. We also do not look like heading that way at present.

Do YOU get what a recession is?

For what it's worth, the only times I have seen airline hiring like this was 1989 (recession we had to have followed), 2001 (tech wreck recession+Sept 11 + Ansett folowed), 2008 (GFC followed).

...No pattern there.