Quote:
Originally Posted by Max C
QLink had no interest as their cost base is far higher and they have downsized the fleet of Q200's to that required to service LHI. QLink wouldn't see anywhere near the profits from the TMR routes needed to justify the amount of resources needed to service the contract.
Air-link only have 1 B1900 which wouldn't be enough to service the contract.
A fleet of B1900D's would almost be the perfect aircraft for the routes given the loads, stand up cabin, Toilet, etc but downsizing from a Dash 8 would be a hard sell.
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They only gave 1 at the moment, but in the past they had 2, so they can add more as required.
Agree the B1900D is the perfect aircraft for the routes, but as you said it would be hard to see the downgrade. Although they've only had a larger aircraft on the routes for 5 years out of the last 28 years. The western local governments want what their coastal towns get, big aircraft, even though the western towns don't have the numbers to support them.
If the local councils and the QLD Government actually looked at the number of passengers on these routes they would see the routes can only support a 19 seat aircraft. The only airline to survive long term on these routes was Flight West, they operated the routes the routes for 12 years and the largest aircraft they had on the routes was the J32EP (18 seats).