Letter from the director

Just moments ago, we announced Regional Express (Rex) had been granted permission to fly even more services underwritten by the federal government – which is great news for regional Australia and a lifeline to the struggling airline.

This has been made possible by the support of the $298 million assistance package worked up by the Commonwealth, and championed by Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack.

The airline has also confirmed it’s now finalised separate deals with Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia to provide journeys over and above what has been outlined in the national agreement, bringing its total weekly return services to 88.

With so much recent negative news regarding aviation, we’re now starting to see some small wins as the nation proactively combats COVID-19, and our airline sector starts showing some semblance of green shoots of recovery.

These are the stories we like to tell.

But we’ve clearly got a long way to go, and the industry we once knew has been fundamentally changed forever.

No doubt, for the glass half full crowd, they’re thinking about five years down the path and how we’ll point out all the positives that have happened as a result of the pandemic.

The rapid shift to a more digital environment, recruiting and training pilots differently and the consolidation of some market segments. The list goes on.

That doesn’t necessarily help, however, the businesses, big and small, right across the nation that are smarting under large fixed costs, with very little revenue to supplement it.

One only needs to look at the impact on Virgin Australia, which is currently in voluntary administration.

The whole sector is feeling the pain. And that’s everyone – not just the top end of town or aviation businesses.

For our recreational pilots, the spotters and even photographers, we’ve all had to change and shape our behaviour. The simple enjoyment of sitting out of Shep’s Mound, watching traffic, alas, is a quickly fading memory for some.

I think it is mature and appropriate to consider the state of play, yet with the lens that this too will pass. This is how I see the world and approach my decision making. We all need to work together to get there.

Some of the numbers I’ve seen paint a pretty dire picture of where we are currently at.

I wanted to find out the true picture for how the sector is responding to COVID-19, to give us a benchmark for how we can emerge. To do this I requested market intelligence business Momentum Intelligence to focus on the aviation sector as part of a big research project it was undertaking with SME platform My Business.

Not only would we see how aviation was tracking in isolation, we would understand how it compared with other markets.

As you’ll read in this month’s In Focus, in a piece produced by my colleague and our senior writer Adam Thorn, 61 per cent of those working in aviation have seen their hours reduced – significantly more than any other industry surveyed as part of the research project.

That’s a pretty big number, and our role here at Australian Aviation is to support the sector as it emerges from what have been, and still are, its darkest days, through up-to-the-minute information and intelligence to form the basis of informed decision making.

And that brings us back to the Rex announcement; we’re now at a point in this cycle where we can start thinking about “what’s next” in a more positive environment as we collectively combat COVID-19 and get aviation back in business.

Aviation is a huge contributor to the national economy and central to Australia’s sovereignty. In lockstep we can all play our part and help get the nation back on its feet.

I trust you enjoy this month’s report, and remember to get in touch if you have any questions.

Phillip Tarrant