In fact, if I was the VA CEO I would be pleased to see the former VA deadwood and deadbeats turning up at other airline functions as that means that the dross might take their uselessness and introduce it to the opposition airline, and that would be a good thing for VA.

Is that in the same vein as an ex JQ CEO now CEO?

Australia all over! The gene pool for executives revolves around recycling hazbeens and I guess lezbeens in all areas of this society starting with politicians and others....

I was more thinking along the lines of Paul might be stepping into the CEO job or COO position at Rex, is all. Sorry.

But others have clarified it is very common, Andrew David, Miss Jayne etc etc.

Paul would still have some knowledge of the new direction Bain is going, some of which would not be common knowledge.
​​​​​​When talking about dross, Miss Jayne knows a thing or two or was that five...... Strategic pillars that one can print out and put in their bathroom to remind you how lucky you are and how it will make a VA successful.

Still a lot of dross at VA.

I think everyone is underestimating the power that VA and QF hold and how weak ZL actually is. Weaker than Tiger.

Yes Virgin has problems being worked through which will take 12-24 months to get the basics right. Qantas has debt issues and will exit with a ****load of it.

I’m just trying to work out what passenger Rex is actually trying to target with this now ‘on and off’ schedule that Sharp pointed at last week. Even Tiger held a firm seasonal schedule.

Rex has a online Check-in which does not work, it has a website that resonates with the year 2005, its ‘change your booking’ platform has been offline since mid December. I can change a Virgin booking on the app in about 60 seconds, even then they claim their Digital platforms are not adequate, and are investing more in Digital over the next 5 years than Rex is injecting into its 737 dream.

It’s clear who is going to be left behind next year and it’s not Jayne or Alan. Watching Scurrah tinker with Rex and it’s 737s will be quite amusing.

So with the last Rexjet flight for the first week just departing Sydney, what’s the verdict ?
Someone must have been looking at loads and OTP. Todays loads might be an aberration following the SCC show last night.
I still reckon six months might be an overestimate for survival despite the PR blurb about route expansion.

Wow - not a word - is the thread being censored ?

I am guessing that people feel one week of operation is too short a time frame to declare a "verdict". I know I do.
Rex have set themselves a huge task and it is pretty clear they did not expect VA to still be operating.
Best of luck to the boys and girls and I hope it works for them. We are all better off by having more jet operators in this country, both as pilots and as consumers.

Appreciate that - I wasn’t looking for a verdict on survival but rather some indication of the first weeks performance - should have worded it a bit differently.

To a point, maybe, providing those jet operators remain solvent.

I don’t think pilots or consumers are better off by endless repetitions of jet operators going under, only to be replaced by the next entrepreneur offering even lower pay and conditions.

And when they are “successful”, they tend to get swallowed up by one of the two majors anyway - ala Impulse, Skywest, Network. QF is already making inroads into Alliance.

I can’t see Rex jets being successful on a large scale in their own right, unless they make some very smart decisions. This would involve offering a better product than VA and JQ on a lower cost base, and persuading the customers of this. They will also need deeper pockets than a quick $150M from a Singaporean investor.

Bain may at some point be interested in making Rex an offer they can’t refuse, and Rex jet replaces Tiger, and Rex regional compliments VARA. If Bain’s exit strategy is to sell VA for more than they paid for it, this could be on the cards. Back to the old duopoly.

Have Rex actually permanently employed any ex-VA pilots, or have they only taken them on via short-term contracts while they train up cadets? Only asking because I saw their advertisement for short-term contract 737 trainers.

Some heads must be exploding along Baxter road this morning with the announcement of the government package to assist domestic aviation.

With at least three of the new Rex routes (Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney to the Gold Coast) being eligible for a government subsidy but only to Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin (as a route needs to of been flown for at least two years to qualify) Rex will be struggling to fill seats even more now.

Even funnier is that Adelaide to Kingscote which Rex have served for years is an eligible route but is also one they are exiting at the end of this month after spitting the dummy about competition. I wonder if they’ll reverse that decision now?

The screeching howls of unfairness will be echoing all weekend.

But why should Rex be given a similar opportunity to the rest?

They have arguably received more government assistance as a proportion than any other airline in Australia and even posted a 10 million dollar profit last year. They had no problem raising 150 million dollars to fund an expansion. On top of this there shouldn’t be any barrier to them increasing their intrastate flights as border restrictions haven’t affected travel within each state as much as between the states.

Are they still keeping the majority of their Saab crews on minimum flying hours?

Rex will need to be careful how they spin this because any cries of unfairness will quickly be shot down by especially their regional customers as it is they who are being ignored while the company chases the dream of shiny jets.

REX relies heavily on Mr not-so-Sharp’s political connections, and his tears. Rather than formulating business strategies that are commensurate with REX size, aircraft type and scope of operation, Messrs Sharp and Lim seem to obviously sit daily in the boardroom and on Zoom tugging on their carrots while dreaming about becoming a behemoth like United Airlines. They need to stop sooking and stop trying to be breastfed from the Infrastructure Minister and National party’s nipples. Somebody, please anybody, when they wake up from their sticky mess can you please tell them that the universe doesn’t revolve around REX?

:D:ok: Sticky mess...great image right there! Gold!

Forget Scurrah. Sharpie on the ABC said he does not pay his executive team more than 200k each. It’s all about keeping costs down. Scuz will want that mill.

Well Scurrah reportedly landed a very good payout after being booted by Bain, contingent on him making a quiet and graceful exit, and apparently he's on a full year of gardening leave instead of six months, so by all accounts he's pretty set and in no rush to return, at least not to an airline. But I suspect that if he did return to Rex as MD or CEO then part of his plan would be to develop the airline to the point where it gets bought by Bain either in full or as an equity plat to become the new Virgin Regional, given that Virgin can't rely on Alliance with Qantas sandboxing ALliance's E190s and eager to increase its own 20% stage in Alliance to maybe full ownership. So maybe Scurrah would be okay to slum it on $200k if he was given an equity stake in Rex so that in the even of a Bain buyout he walks away with a lot more.

Rex looks to add more Boeing 737 jets, more destinations: https://www.executivetraveller.com/n...e-destinations

Rex being quite up front now about wanting cities to show an "expression of interest" aka $$$ for being next on its Boeing 737 list. BNE still a front runner you'd think, can't see PER being part of this, and not HOB given the mid-year timing.

Adelaide and the Gold Coast has always been the most active when it came to incentivizing carriers to come.

Canberra, Cairns, Hobart will probably appear soon.

Id expect a deal to run to Darwin for the peak season.

I'd be surprised that QF and/or VA didn't have deals with airports that means they get best available deal. This would mean any offer to waive fees for REX would need to be passed onto one or both of the main carriers. For example, Qld and BNE made a significant play to keep VA based in BNE; it is likely this included a best price match clause,

I hope he enjoys his gardening and he removes all of the weeds, unlike his efforts at VA. He is a soft man. ‘Scuz’ has proven he is incapable of being a quality CEO of a volatile publicly listed company. He is better off back in the railways where the toot toot trains have a monopoly and losing money is practically impossible. His abilities lack strength and he is a light and fluffy CEO who lacks mongrel. Carla on the other hand has energy and a decent of cajones and won’t be intimidate by groups of ‘internal Specialists’ or the big talking/BS sprouting Unions.

Neville Howell and Paul Fischer were paid base salaries of $232K and $205K respectively. Mr Howell's total renumeration figure was $312K whilst most of the executive team were paid total packages well over $200K.

I'm not sure Mr Sharp knows the company issues annual reports on their website.

But then again maths hasn't been his strong suit; I seem to recall some errors in his expense claims.