Rex to fly between Australian capital cities

[milehighclub]

I reckon REX"s base of leisure travellers by and large dislike early rising.

Well tomorrow, it is a pretty healthy flight load wise, but I guess not surprising for a Monday, but on Tuesday, it drops to single digits.

 

[Melburnian1]

Well tomorrow, it is a pretty healthy flight load wise, but I guess not surprising for a Monday, but on Tuesday, it drops to single digits.

Indeed. Haven't searched in the last few days, but prior, regularly seeing 20-25 on early morning ZLs (and as remarked, sometimes only 45-50 on QFd).

 

[MooTime]

Heard REX advertising this morning on 3AW radio, specifically & only about their $39 MEL-SYD route.

Finally.

 

[AIRwin]

Rex will launch B737 flights between MEL and CBR on 10 June:

https://www.rex.com.au/BlobViewer/BlobViewer.aspx?attachtype=MR&filename=597461504F31694C6A494150534A6F642B4532626D32575644353239494E4C76623238575651366C664E396F7A3039773656706B615839556E6463736F642B5941446F6862672F6E4A77673D

 

[Mattg]

great news. $69 fares, but if people MUST use Rex or fares will go back to high levels.

Great news indeed - Virgin's CBR-MEL fares have dropped from $185 to $69 starting from the 10th of June!

 

[Melburnian1]

Great news indeed - Virgin's CBR-MEL fares have dropped from $185 to $69 starting from the 10th of June!

I will be surprised if a single politician or staff member uses Rex. Doubtless few use Virgin.

CBR- MEL is an unusual route. Planes can be poorly patronised mid week, much more so than on other routes linking larger cities than CBR. Its catchment is perhaps 500000 at best, compared to say Adelaide that has a catchment of maybe 16000000.

 

[Mattg]

CBR- MEL is an unusual route. Planes can be poorly patronised mid week, much more so than on other routes linking larger cities than CBR.

It all depends whether parliament is sitting. While I doubt many actual politicians will fly Rex, there are thousands of staffers, lobbyists, etc. etc. who fly to/from CBR during sitting weeks. The trouble is that most of those people fly in on Sunday evening/Monday morning and then leave on Thursday/Friday night.

Anyway, I suspect Rex is going to mostly attract the same types of customers who fly Tigerair between MEL-CBR when they were operating that route.

I'm fairly sure that Tigerair's launch fares were also $69 when they started CBR-MEL in 2016, although that excluded baggage.

 

[henrus]

aren't public servants meant to use best fare of the day on any airline ? Obviously ways around this.

Taking the AU gov travel policy as an example, it's just limited to best fare within 1 hour of intended travel:

Domestic Travel Policy (RMG 404) | Department of Finance

www.finance.gov.au

Rex is unlikely to be selected for two reasons, firstly the times. Using a random date in June it's clear how little impact this is going to have given only two flights per day. For outbound flights the 1 hour is based on prior to the booked time, for inbound flights it's based on 1hr after the booked time.

If anyone wants to fly on Qantas and is leaving Canberra (for an official trip to MEL) then booking the 6:05am, 7:50am, 9:35am, 11:55am, 4:25pm, 5:35pm will meet the AU Gov policy.




Also, Rex still doesn't publish the $69 promo fares in the GDS. What this means is that any corporate travelers booking via an agent will see the cheapest rex fares at around $120 and any VA fare will beat them provided it's around the right time. I suspect VA knows this because they've only dropped some flights to $69 with others still around $150-180 when it's only QF flights around.

 

[milehighclub]

Interesting that Google thinks that luggage isn't included on those fares. I wonder how it determines that information.

 

[dajop]

Also, Rex still doesn't publish the $69 promo fares in the GDS. What this means is that any corporate travelers booking via an agent will see the cheapest rex fares at around $120 and any VA fare will beat them provided it's around the right time. I suspect VA knows this because they've only dropped some flights to $69 with others still around $150-180 when it's only QF flights around.

There may be an opportunity with the 17:45 departure CBR-MEL. Before 2009 I used to fly semi-regularly (monthly) between the cities, but still had to manage my travel budget and I didn't particularly like having to inevitably pay full fare to take the late afternoon QF flight back, so instead used to fly DJ at around the same time as they were always a lot cheaper. For this reason the 17:45 might be an attractive alternative- at least to the private sector - compared the heavy loaded 17:35 on QF or the 55 min later VA flight.

 

[henrus]

Interesting that Google thinks that luggage isn't included on those fares. I wonder how it determines that information.

It's actually talking about a lack of overhead bin space. I'd take it with a grain of salt as this OOL-MEL search shows that one JQ flight does have space and the other doesn't. The same with those two VA flights at the bottom.

 

[kookaburra75]

Great news indeed - Virgin's CBR-MEL fares have dropped from $185 to $69 starting from the 10th of June!

Thank goodness they have managed to remove the "Canberra Tax", where us locals got slugged extra for everything due to our overpaid FIFO workers. With Rex on the CBR-SYD route and now CBR-MEL route, we're getting some downward pressure on fares for a change.

There may be an opportunity with the 17:45 departure CBR-MEL. Before 2009 I used to fly semi-regularly (monthly) between the cities, but still had to manage my travel budget and I didn't particularly like having to inevitably pay full fare to take the late afternoon QF flight back, so instead used to fly DJ at around the same time as they were always a lot cheaper. For this reason the 17:45 might be an attractive alternative- at least to the private sector - compared the heavy loaded 17:35 on QF or the 55 min later VA flight.

I'm the same, and usually fly a first flight out, last flight back - and even 1735 is a bit early to leave Melbourne. However, for non-work related travel, such as shopping trips to Melbourne $69 each way makes it even more worthwhile

 

[Melburnian1]

On a quick EF check for Tuesday 18 May 2021,:

ZL's 0700 hours MEL - SYD had 92 in whY, the 1000 surprisingly fewer with 54 and the 1200 'high noon' 74.

Southbound, the 0700 hours conveyed 46 in whY, the 0-930 hours 88 and the 1300 hours (very much off peak) 63.

The one QFd flight I checked at 0700 hours MEL-SYD was a widebody, A332 VH-EBK, but while better loaded than ZL (and way better in yield), it had many empty whY seats. QF's overheads are way higher than Zl's will ever be. Three years ago, even on a Tuesday (usually it and Wed are the quietest weekdays), it'd have been likely that QFd's 0700 would have had 95 per cent of seats occupied (with the vacant ones largely being non shows).

I didn't check J passenger numbers on any of these so in most cases the true number of revenue passengers would be higher.

 

[Melburnian1]

Thank goodness they have managed to remove the "Canberra Tax", where us locals got slugged extra for everything due to our overpaid FIFO workers. With Rex on the CBR-SYD route and now CBR-MEL route, we're getting some downward pressure on fares for a change.

That tax hasn't really disappeared, as Rex's cheapest fares on the MEL - SYD route are $39 compared to $69 MEL - CBR. So you pay 76 per cent more. With all the affluent public sector employees and contractors, the airlines know you can "all" afford this hike. Canberra is not a micocosm of Oz.

 

[kookaburra75]

That tax hasn't really disappeared, as Rex's cheapest fares on the MEL - SYD route are $39 compared to $69 MEL - CBR. So you pay 76 per cent more. With all the affluent public sector employees and contractors, the airlines know you can "all" afford this hike. Canberra is not a micocosm of Oz.

I agree sadly - although MEL-SYD route has the economies of scale to always be cheaper than servicing our regional city of 350,000 people to other locations. We always look at the cheaper airfares with envy, even your ability to access cheap flights on Jetstar

 

[Mattg]

I agree sadly - although MEL-SYD route has the economies of scale to always be cheaper than servicing our regional city of 350,000 people to other locations. We always look at the cheaper airfares with envy, even your ability to access cheap flights on Jetstar

Worth noting that Rex's launch fares on SYD-MEL were $79. The $69 CBR-MEL fares are actually lower.

The only reason Rex is now doing $39 on SYD-MEL is desperation. That price is below cost.

 

[Mattg]

wonder if Rex should be doing the occasional flight to NZ ? Surely they could do international ops ? Must be money in it, especially in school holidays & busy periods.

Does Rex have the appropriate air operator certificates to fly passengers to New Zealand? I think it would be more costly than you realise to get all the necessary approvals to start commercial flights there.

In any case, based on the (very poor) loads we've seen so far on most trans-Tasman flights, I don't think there would be money in it for Rex. Even Virgin won't fly to NZ under the current conditions.

I would imagine Rex would look to fly to PER, DRW or CNS before New Zealand.

 

[Mattg]

not desperation, but shows everyone what can be done. For $78 return with luggage my wife would be going to other city every week for lunch/shopping etc. if we lived in SYD or MEL.

It's loss-making for the airline as it costs them more $39 each way to operate the seat. It can be done but it's not sustainable.

 

[Mattg]

Qantas has dropped its lowest CBR-MEL fares from $218 to $99 from 10 June.

 

[henrus]

wonder if Rex should be doing the occasional flight to NZ ? Surely they could do international ops ?

No reason why they can't and I'd love for them to do so (bringing down prices). Thanks to decent bilateral agreements, Rex's AOC can reasonably easily be amended to allow for NZ flights so if they really wanted to they could quite easily operate flights to NZ (or even domestic NZ operations). It's the initial setup that would be quite costly and very involved.

Things that come to mind; amending the AOC, building international systems into their existing booking system (for processing with the Advance Passenger Processing [APP]), biosecurity requirements (eg. regular aircraft spraying), ground handling in NZ (easier in AKL, WLG, CHC and ZQN thanks to PlaneBiz) and agreements with NZ airports.

If they could sign some amazing deals with NZ airports/ground handling etc then the operating cost of these flights ironically wouldn't be that much more than many of their domestic services, noting that running an almost empty 737 2.5hrs across the tasman or 2.5hrs domestically isn't that different.

Virgin used to fly Bris/Dunedin 3 to 4 times a week depending on time of the year & once a week would not suit everyone, but what else can Dunedin people do ?

Those VA flights were shocking. During holidays the load factors were great but outside they were quite shocking. I was always surprised they didn't make the route seasonal or cut it complelty when the NZ codeshare agreement ended. If there was money to be made then you can bet that Air NZ would be down there but sadly that's not the case. The Air NZ GM of routes was asked about this a month ago and responded saying it was hard for them to serve Dunedin as they had no crews or aircraft based down there.