SKYTRANS - Cairns - new management team
 

Reported in today's Cairns Post is an article relating to Skytran's and their management team.
(article behind a paywall)

Executive summary thanks to google "The airline company has appointed qualified pilot and former Virgin Blue and LifeFlight operations boss Tim Healee as the new group chief"

Are TCAS, Sargent Shultz Smith and the not-so-Wild’s part of the new team? Great aircraft to fly if you like low wages and vintage aircraft.

Word on the street is Skytrans have made some operations staff redundant, citing cash flow issues. I wonder if they will still go ahead with their CS-PN-RK service?

Underwritten by the airports and QLD Government. Will make money for them without pax. As Kerry said “you only get one Alan Bond”.

Hadn’t heard the service was underwritten. I was under the impression it was an attempt at the leisure market.

Of course everyone commenting on here must be able to do better and knows the financials and everything of the company :hmm:

Rather confused by the title of this thread as Skytrans seem to have a new management team every week. The former CEO managed to assemble and retain a reasonable team, but they all seem to have left since the former CEO of Air Niugini arrived.

Former Air Niugini CEO? Elaborate further with who that person is.

I believe they have a website. Can’t miss him, he loves the media…..

Skytrans?

Alan Milne appears once on the Skytrans website…. He is the CEO after all.

Bit harsh in your comments there I feel Kagamuga.

From what I understand, no-one believed he could EVER fix PX, but there were a hell of lot that hoped he could ....and there were also quite a few that were surprised he managed to hang in there as long as he did.

But you know what, I seriously believe that when he left , he was able to do so with his integrity intact. Bit of a badge of honour for someone who was employed within a PNG SOE, especially PX.

Lukim yu.

I think Alan was probably a victim of the COVID mess like most of us. He was certainly a great asset to ANG, particularly in a difficult time after the 737 accident that occurred just before he started.

I also noticed they have another two recent ex PNG blokes in management, both of whom have a good reputation in the industry.

NCD, you are correct. Post removed.

And yet I thought it was a fair post & accurate post

geeup, so did I, alas others think otherwise.
PNG politics I'm afraid.

Last week some of their pilots were asked to take a 1 day pay cut.

Skydung airlines
 

Skytrans (the original) was a great regional airline when the Barnard’s owned it. Great people, great atmosphere and a great place to work. Once the Wild’s got their grubby hands on the airline, along with the then CEO Mr Siva, they kept growing the airline by purchasing ancient Dash 8’s during the mining boom. They didn’t have the brains to foresee a likely mining downturn or levelling off, so suddenly the mining boom tanked they were left with old buckets for planes with not enough utilisation. The slippery Wilds blamed their demise on REX winning government contracts but that is a load of BS and the blame lays at their own incompetent feet. They got greedy and had a posse of wan#er executives running the place and running it poorly. A number of these tools have bounced between Skytrans, APNG, and Skytrans Mk2. They went bust and since 2013, which includes their partial resurrection by West Wing, they have had financial issues constantly, made people redundant, not secured contracts, had unreliable old clunker Dash 8’s and they’ve been through around 5 CEO’s. It’s a miracle that COVID hasn’t killed them off, again.

It was a once good airline. If I could turn the clock back somewhat I would be more than happy to fly for them again, pre the Wilds. However the shonky Wilds ruined a good airline but dreaming about becoming some kind of massive player in the aviation industry, and they broke the airlines back, but not before squirrelling many millions out the back door before she went bust.

Careful Epicurus, posts telling the truth about "Wild Air" tend not to last long here for some reason.
The above is sadly all true :{ I don't know many of the players in TryTrans Mk3 these days and I do wish Mr Milne & Co all the best.

Being there at the time I remember clearly when all this began. The original Skytrans being a mainly C404 operator, was going through growing pains and needed extra capacity on the CNS - AUR service. Their solution was to cross hire a QRA Dash8 in their livery to service the run, a very nice paint job it was too :)
The "Not So Wilds" headed up by Thick Minee in those days made their move and took over Skytrans, later re branding (IPA/QRA) to Skytrans as they had a far better reputation. First time in history that I can recall where a regional airline has rebranded in the name of a piston operator, such was (still is) the reputation of the Barnard's.

As for massive player delusions, not wrong. At one time the "plan" was to merge QRA with APNG to create some sort of North Queensland / Melanesian super carrier all the while tooled with same ex Sunnies old hundy series clunkers. What could possibly go wrong. :D

BAz :ok:

Whats the go with the cashflow issues? 90% of the traffic is cairns based pax travelling to and from CY and the straits. The lockdowns in SYD and MEL should have minimal impact on their mainly monopoly routes. Something doesn’t smell right.