Thread: Qantas trying to force REX out of their country routes.

Rex and Qantas have shared the DUbbo route for as long as I can remember. Well, pretty much since Rex took over from Hazeltons, anyway.

I think that Rex decided to try to replace Virgin on the Bris/Syd/Melb route when it looked like Virgin was going to go belly up. It must have been a bit of a shock for Rex when Virgin was able to resurrect itself, albeit in a reduced capacity.

The reality is that Qantas has the backup resources to sustain a prolonged price war if it comes to that, where the new Virgin and REx do not - the new Virgin understand this and I understand that their new pricing structure is to compete with Qantas but not undercut them where the Rex intention is to provide Qantas service at a Tiger price. This will fail as all cut price airlines trying to compete direct with Qantas have in the past - Qantas, if it wants, can always undercut cheap airlines as long as their actions to not trigger ACCC intervention.

Garry

With some of new generation aeroplanes coming onto domestic routes , vis Pilatus , Embraier , Bombardier , even Beechcraft , there are many more , their newer levels of efficiency will allow some operators an opportunity to operate some short haul routes profitably.

So often in the past operators have tried to operate the totally wrong aeroplane type and failed.

Its not 1920 like when Qantas was heavily directed by the mother country and had everything DeHavilland in the fleet whether it did the job properly or not.

It really wasn't until Qantas ignored Britain (who couldn't make a decent domestic service aeroplane at the time) , expertly purchased such aeroplanes as Douglas and Boeing that they could do what was required effectively on Australia's long routes.

Rex are a prime example of a fleet update requirement. If they did , more inland routes could effectively open , without disturbing Qantas, Virgin and their lower level airlines. I thought Tiger had folded.