Peter Kelly says he wants to raise $200 million to launch Zinc, an ultra-low-cost carrier based at Western Sydney aiming at breaking the domestic duopoly.
A third airline to bust the cosy Qantas and Virgin Australia duopoly? It’s a hope that, over the decades, has lured many dreamers and hundreds of millions of dollars, but has proven elusive. And yet – even as fuel prices rise, and economic uncertainties grow – there is another contender.
Peter Kelly ran Ansett’s Golden Wing Club before being poached to run Qantas’ frequent flyer program. That was in the nineties and noughties. Now he wants to raise $200 million to fund a new airline known as Zinc, modelled on the world’s most profitable low-cost carrier, Ryanair.
Kelly, who has run an aviation consultancy since leaving Qantas and was involved in the founding of now-defunct Cypriot carrier Cobalt Air, is banking on the opening of Western Sydney International Airport this year to change the economics of flying, and give his new airline a chance to succeed.
“One of the main features of an ultra-low-cost carrier model is its efficiency,” says Kelly, who was part of the team that set up Jetstar. “Some think it’s about not paying staff and low costs; it’s not. Our model is about sweating the assets and running the planes for 12 hours a day minimum.
“Jetstar is operating a larger model with the number of places they fly to – the type of network they have, with a large number of aircraft and places, they can’t apply the same model,” he says, adding that Zinc would fly between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and later expand to the Gold Coast.
www.flyzinc.au
www.afr.com
