REGIONAL Express Airlines (Rex) says it has grave concerns Qantas is embarking on an opportunistic strategy of flooding the regional airline market with additional excess capacity to eliminate weaker regional competitors.
Rex said its Mildura-Adelaide route, which will resume flights early in the new year, was one of the regional routes being targeted by Qantas.
With Qantas also starting a brand new service between Mildura and Adelaide shortly, the regional city will soon have direct QantasLink services to three capital cities.
Rex said Qantas was choosing to incur huge losses on regional routes using Federal Government subsidies to finance a strategy that will destroy incumbent operators.
Rex was forced to suspend the Mildura-Adelaide service in April due to the COVID-19 border restrictions, but will resume flights from Monday, January 4.
Rex plans to run two return flights per week on Mondays and Thursdays.
The company said it feared Qantas was trying to weaken Rex by attacking its profitable regional operations, even at the cost of heavy losses for itself.
Rex has called on the Federal Government to cease all grants to Qantas if it persisted with the “opportunistic behaviour”.
“The Federal Government should be aware that Qantas’ actions will have a long-term negative impact on regional aviation,” the company said in a statement.
“If Qantas succeeds in driving Rex away from these routes, there is every possibility they will never have a regional service again when they are no longer relevant to Qantas.”
In September, Rex got the go-ahead from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for interim authorisation to collaborate with Qantas on 10 regional routes they competed on, including Mildura-Melbourne.
