Regional Express Airlines, commonly known as REX, is
Australia's largest regional airline outside the Qantas group of companies and
provides regular passenger transport (RPT) and ad-hoc charter services in
Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia with a fleet
of Swedish built SAAB 340B and 340B+ turboprop aircraft.
In this review, we
take a look at the carrier's Queensland operations.
Although REX has been operating in Queensland for a number
years, the airline dramatically increased it’s presence in the sunshine state
from January 2015 onwards when the company took over a number of subsidised
routes from Cairns based Skytrans Airlines on behalf of the Queensland State
Government.
These country routes which are sometimes referred to as ‘milk runs’
comprise of the following :
* Gulf : Cairns - Normanton -
Gununa / Mornington Island - Burketown - Doomadgee - Mount Isa and
return.
* Northern 1 : Townsville - Winton - Longreach and
return.
* Northern 2 : Townsville - Hughenden - Richmond - Julia
Creek - Mount Isa and return.
* Western 1 : Brisbane - Toowoomba / Wellcamp - St George -
Cunnamulla - Thargomindah and return.
* Western 2 : Brisbane - Toowoomba / Wellcamp - Charleville
- Quilpie - Windorah - Birdsville - Bedourie - Boulia - Mount Isa and
return.
Outside the subsidised routes, Regional Express Airlines
also provides RPT services in Far North Queensland connecting Cairns with direct
flights to Bamaga, Mount Isa and Townsville.
However, when Aviex’s largest client, Virgin Australia Regional Airlines, decided to relocate ATR 72 line maintenance to its own facility in Brisbane a few months later, there was not enough work to
sustain the company and therefore was closed in August 2015.
