Rex Airlines enters voluntary administration but regional services continuing to operate
In short: Rex Airlines enters voluntary administration after a failed bid to take on major airlines on mainline routes.
EY have been appointed as administrators and all capital city routes have been grounded.
What's next? Virgin Australia is offering affected domestic passengers free-of-charge rebooking.
This was expected.
Godspeed
Rex em sick ….
Who's next?
I'm convinced the economy completely shat itself about 2 months ago, but the big dogs in government won't get the numbers on a spreadsheet for 3-6 months.
Until then, their numbers will tell them everything is hunky dory, probably even sprinkle a cheeky interest rate hike into the mix.
Hopefully they realize how cooked the economy is within the next month..
They’ll just continue to import people, we’re obviously creating enough private sector jobs for everyone. It’s definitely not the NDIS doing any heavy lifting for employment figures.
Reminds me of Ansett.
Reg or Bob ?
Air fares will be going up, up and away………
Back to a duopoly we go.
No more biggies!
IMO It isn't a huge surprise if they started trying to get in on the main routes. Rex is synonymous with regional travel, and as a result you carry that brand recognition of being an airline for FIFO workers, farmers, etc. and transporting passengers via glorified cropdusters. I have flown on Rex (regional) a few times, and because of that experience i'd never fly them on an interstate flight. Nothing wrong with them, but my brain believes that it will be slow, noisy, bumpy, average service
A real shame for the average traveller.
As someone who lives regional the local airport here only had two options. Rex & Qantas.
I can't imagine what this is going to do to the $$ of flights out of here now.
Similar situations at other airports on the mid north coast.
Lots of "Unsurprising" and "They should have continued to focus on regional" messages here and on Reddit. I wonder how many of them flew with Rex?
I'm quite surprised and annoyed. I've flown on the Rex 737's nearly 20 times between Melb -> Syd -> Bris -> Canberra over the last 3 years, and every flight has been great: Very few delays, a snack no matter how long the flight is and exceptional staff.
Pricing was always obviously higher then virgin/jetstar, but fair: I averaged $~110 per flight with a checked bag, and to me it's worth it to minimize the huge time and energy impact airports can have on life.
It is a shame that people don't want competition on domestic market. Even our prime minister says Rex should focus on regional. Price will only go up with less competition.
I never flew with Rex because a) I didn’t even know they flew between Sydney and Melbourne because I was under the impression they only flew regional routes and b) if prices were higher than Virgin I’d rather fly Virgin (even if they stopped giving out snacks after Bain bought them). Haven’t had a lot of delays on Virgin myself except for the odd one because I was catching a 9:30 pm flight.
I'm just trying to understand why they are referring to the capital to capital flights as the 737 flight. Since Rex flies E190s for Perth to Adelaide…
failed bid to take on major airlines on mainline routes.
Taking on major airlines on mainline routes before even developing a nice modern website? Lol.
For customers with plans to travel with Rex, VA and ZL did make some sort of agreement in the interim.
“Virgin Australia has made an offer for Rex customers with an existing ticket on a flight cancelled due to the administration process the opportunity to transfer their ticket free of charge to the 13 overlapping Virgin Australia services,” EY said in a statement.
“Rex and Virgin Australia are also exploring opportunities to support regional customers, which include Virgin Australia selling Rex’s regional services through codeshare or interline arrangements, and making Velocity Frequent Flyer benefits available to Rex’s regional customers.”
For customers who have bought a capital city route in the future
File for a credit card charge back ASAP
This is sad but was expected, they gambled and it sadly did not pay off. I am fully expecting the government to save the regional component of Rex with government subsidies going forward, and to restart whatever exists of ZL with new capital liquidity after selling off the 738 division of the airline. OR, Virgin Australia takes over - which could be a possibility given that they are in deep talks from what we are seeing, given that VA doesnt have any real regional presence it would be a one to one head with QF Link.