If tax payer money going in to save regional services then go back to the Max’s ( Kendal & Hazelton ) philosophy and really support regional centres . Base aircraft , crews , engineers and admin staff in the regional areas where competitive pay scales give a good quality of life and if you need an early departure out of capital cities just overnight crews . Support local talent so they happy to live in the country . Get rid of expensive city boardrooms and suit wearing board members .

I wish I could like your post multiple times. Agree entirely, Kaine is just a mouth that spews out nonsense. His comments are completely tarnished by his obvious hatred for Qantas and like the media he jumps straight on and blames everything that goes wrong in the industry on Qantas.

If the bloke knew anything, this 'safe and secure skies' BS he's parotting he would know is nonsense. CASA has a duty to ensure that prospective operators have the financial resources to conduct the intended operations. If anything, CASA needs to dig a bit deeper but Kaine is like one of those old dolls that you pull a string and the same message comes out over and over again.

To be fair, I think the work experience kid would have seen through it, it was likely the arrogant SOB with an MBA that knew nothing about the industry that came up with the idea.

That's rubbish. Rex started the fare war by entering the market. Too small, no scale, many much higher fares being paid on those same QF and VA flights at the same time as ZL - stop making excuses for absolutely pathetically inept management on the part of carriers like ZL. They had a good thing but they had to firstly, beg the Morrison Govt. for money to save their regional operation then when they got the money, showed they had no intention of using it for regional and used the whole lot to lease 737s and start a capital city operation. They should have been made to pay the money back to the taxpayer. Rex did this to itself and they started it with, what was it, $180M of taxpayers' money? So, the taxpayer funded this folly and now the inevitable chickens have come home to roost - the usual blame game starts that it's all Qantas and Virgin's fault. Nonsense and BS.

Incompetent management in Australian business need to stop having delusions of grandeur and putting other people's money and their employees' futures in jeopardy on these ill-conceived follies. We are about the same size as the contiguous United States but we DON'T have 341M people living here so can't support more than really, two reasonably well funded mainline carriers. That's just a fact.

Any consequences for Rex's pilot academy in Wagga Wagga & Victoria?

Thus far business as usual as per the administrator. Seems to still be plenty of training traffic out of both so it seems ok?

In exactly the same vein, the shadow transport and RRAT senator is now standing in front of a gate saying nothing of value about fixing shonky finances but plenty about how it’s not a Rex issue and it’s all on Albo and Qantas.
Couldn’t be that the primary assumption in their own documents that they’d replace VA became fantasy two years before CASA stopped reporting to her. Joe Public would be extremely well served by hearing the real story of what used to be Regional Express, and if pilots really are being “poached” or just finding greener pastures.

Can’t wait for another loud but toothless estimates hearing.

I don't think that there are too many people at Rex with an MBA apart from one of the Company Secretaries, Benjamin Ng. No one with a real MBA would have put a slide deck together like the one for Project Mother. Mother was more likely an LKH brain-fart, don't you think?

Aerial, I’ve spoken to him at length over it, they agreed, management here have historically got distracted and lost focus, be it Rex, Virgin, Tiger or whoever. They didn’t run with it however.

The unions have very strict talking points, I’ve seen a brief at a presser which took me by surprise. The main points in this arena is focusing on competition, monopolies, governments. Kaine just isn’t going to get up and start banging on about LKH, JS, and Rex’s lack of investment in IT, Marketing, Product etc which has ultimately led to the downfall.

It’s a tough time for those especially who have worked across many of the Ansett/Strategic/Tiger/Rex collapses, some have worked for the whole lot. Stability is going to be important for this profession moving forward.

What is it that Administrators can do that the company management can't. Do they have special powers to restructure a company that the exisiting management does not? Does the voluntary appointment of administrators mean management has reached a point where they admit and accept they are not capable of restructuring the company or is it owing to some legislation that enables some provisions to companies operating under "administration" ?

https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resou...ers/#voluntary

https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/201511...zf9r5kmfcn.pdf

ppl keep bashing MBA but isn’t NH a pilot?? He’s supposed to the place

A voluntary administrator isn't normally appointed unless a company is insolvent or likely to become insolvent. There are serious penalties for insolvent trading, for which directors are personally liable. The purpose of voluntary administration is to give the company breathing space while its future is resolved. For example, unsecured creditors can't take action to enforce claims without the administrator's consent; lessors can't recover their property; creditors can't commence action to liquidate the company, etc. The voluntary administrator will look for ways to save the company, but if that proves impossible, the aim would be to administer the company’s affairs to maximise the return for creditors, not the owners of the business.

The five entities that are under administration are marked below (note that Rex Freight Charter Pty Limited is now known as Air Partners Pty Ltd). Typically, when a parent or holding company comes under administration, the assets of subsidiaries come into play if it gets down to debt recovery for creditors.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2fe0991865.jpg

Correct, It would be usual for the financial charge held by a bank to ensnare subsidiaries. This is because typically the holding company has very few assets apart from its investments in the subsidiaries and lenders want to be able to access the assets.

Complex businesses like airlines can be quite confusing to sort out with many leased assets or collateralised assets which will typically sit before the floating charge held by a bank. In addition, the employees and ATO also hold a priority position. The administrator will also have to come to arrangements with airports and fuel companies given the SAAB operation is still operating and both are probably owed significant sums though I assume the federal government may also exert some pressure on this.

This whole situation makes me angry.

The media and opposition banging on about how Rex must get financial assistance from the government etc...

The only way I would support Rex getting any more support, is if the entire "management" is wiped and not allowed to work at the company again. This entire thing is due to their incompetence. For goodness sake, the CEO isn't even a businessman, he's a "pilot" who won't give up his seniority number with no business experience bar being a puppet controlled by a certain someone.

It's just such a shame so many good people are losing their jobs out of this. Realistically, based upon the speakings to employees and the media from EY today, the Saab operation shouldn't even be operating. They've openly said there's no money left. So obviously the government has given some sort of guarantee already.

On top of it all is the Qantas bashing. I fail to see what Qantas has done in any of this. Mostly as mentioned above already.
But if you want to talk about predatory actions, look at Virgin, they were the only ones selling fares for a few dollars less than Rex on their routes at the same time. Just see the most recent school holidays with VA matching ZL's obvious last attempt on getting pax on the new MEL-PER route. Qantas just let them go as they knew they were no competition anyway. Anyway, I digress...

The Saab operation has no future as it is in its current form. Half the fleet is parked without engines, there's no engineers and there's no pilots. Again, it's all down to management. People have left for greener pastures.
The only way in my eyes that regional Australia can be saved, is QF keeping the Q200/300's and the government imposing a price cap on all regional centres. That or VA taking ownership of the regional entity. Perhaps Link Airways could give it a crack? Who knows.... In either case, there's a massive predicament ahead of the government and blaming QF/VA is not the answer.

There will be case studies done on this in universities for years to come. An example on how c*ckiness, lies and deception can destroy a consistently profitable entity with an almost monopoly market and a licence to print money.

Do we really think Joe Public is going to continue to make forward bookings on the regional routes?
Perhaps if they have no choice.

There's an interview with one of the administrators begging people continue forward bookings. Trying to stress how important it is, proving the desperation.

Deloitte obviously knew what they were in for when they said they don't want to go near Rex. EY have a big job ahead of them and a massive amount of pressure to save this. I'm not trying to be pessimistic as I know how crucial it is, but I'm really not sure how it will be done. As I said, there's nothing left, they can barely operate the Saab's that are running now with the crew they have. They're still forcing people to work in Perth for weeks at a time to keep the government routes running at the cost of the east coast routes... No wonder QLink flights are filling.

I couldn’t agree more, well said and saved me typing it!!

The cash situation here seems fairly dire, I know Mick went over the numbers, but the comments put out today indicates very little remains, that is much earlier vs predicted. PAG have tipped in more cash, they have stated to staff they are not in the financial position to pay redundancy or wages, or to put it simply, don’t have the financial means to do much. Certainly have burnt considerable funds in the last half when looking at what was available December 31. Assuming those numbers had even been accurate, just seems like extreme cash burn in H2.

Someone said VH-PAG was repossessed the other month due to outstanding engineering invoices. Unknown if weight behind that story.