Regional Express (Rex) has confirmed its full commitment to the North West Coast and Burnie in particular.
Announcing increased services following the withdrawal of QantasLink from Burnie Airport on 31 July, Rex Managing Director, Geoff Breust said the airline was determined to make its services to Burnie successful for the long term.
“The withdrawal of QantasLink will make the market far more viable for us and a much better proposition for the long term. We are now determined to increase our flight frequency and seating capacity to fill the gap.
“While the short notice of QantasLink’s intentions has limited our immediate response, we announce today additional weekend services from 1 August bringing Rex’s operations to three return services to Melbourne, seven days per week. This will provide an additional six flights and 204 seats per week.
“From 14 August, Rex will operate a four return daily frequency on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays adding 30 sectors and 1,020 seats onto the current schedule”, Mr Breust said.
Mr Breust added that Rex was currently trying to source an additional aircraft and crews to provide even more flights and seats over the coming summer period.
“Rex had plans in the pipeline to acquire more aircraft for increased operations on other parts of our network and for increased activity in charter and air freight services. These plans are now under review in the light of the changed circumstances.
“We are hopeful we will be in a position to announce those plans in more detail in the coming weeks,” Mr Breust said.
Mr Breust said Rex would be concentrating on Burnie and had no plans to re-commence services on the Melbourne – Devonport route.
“We believe Rex’s strategy of bringing reliable and affordable air services to regional communities will enable us to provide an even better level of service to Burnie than that received in recent years. Rex is prepared to invest strongly in partnership with the Burnie Airport Corporation, State and local government and the local community to achieve the best outcome.
“Working together in partnership with the support of local business and the community generally, we can achieve much. This approach has worked well elsewhere on our network and will work on the North West Coast,” Mr Breust said.
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Media contact: 0402 438 361 – Sara–Jane Uden
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