Skytrans Cease Operations

[Zac M]

Another small airline gone...

Originally Posted by Skytrans Website

Dear valued passengers, suppliers, staff, key stakeholder and friends of Skytrans,

Skytrans Pty Ltd, the Cairns based, family owned and commercially operated airline which celebrated its 25th year of serving the people and communities of North Queensland, carried its last passenger this afternoon, Friday 2nd January 2015.

Skytrans Pty Ltd has made the decision to cease trading, effective immediately. As the Managing Director, I will seek legal and financial advice over the next few days regarding options for the business moving forward, but to be clear, it does not include the recommencement of flights in the short to medium term.

As Managing Director I have a lawful responsibility to notify regulators and other significant stakeholders when there are key impacts on the business. This has been one of those times.

This is not only a sad day for the business, but more importantly for our staff and indeed the passengers and communities of North Queensland. Yesterday, the 1st of January 2015 marked our 25th anniversary of serving the people of Queensland, particularly outback and regional Queensland, the Gulf country and Cape York.

Today there is no celebration, beyond the pride everyone in Skytrans shares in having delivered a safe reliable passenger and freight service to communities as diverse as Birdsville and Boulia, Bamaga and Brisbane. We will miss them all, for they have all been relationships built over a lifetime of trust and mutual support, collaboration and shared endeavour, and good old fashioned friendships forged easily between good people.

More details available on the Skytrans Website

[Rowan McKeever]

Sad news, thoughts are with the staff & their families

[Ryan Hothersall]

Shame to see another regional airline go.

Glad I got my flight on the Dasg8-100 when I did.

[Michael R]

Sad to see another regional airline fall hopefully Rex may pick up some extra staff especially from the remote ares.

[Rowan McKeever]

Rex already has the ex-Skytrans contracts to remote Qld, that's part of the reason they ended up closing

[Mick F]

Exactly. Another Australian company failing because of contracts going to overseas owned companies.

Thanks Qld government.

Mick

[Paul F]

Originally Posted by Mick F

Exactly. Another Australian company failing because of contracts going to overseas owned companies.

Thanks Qld government.

Mick

REX isn't an overseas owned company, its main shareholder maybe overseas based but the majority are Australian based.

[Rowan McKeever]

I think given their majority shareholder is also their Executive Chairman (i.e. has a role in the day-to-day management as opposed to just being the chairperson) that qualifies them as a foreign-controlled company which is essentially the point of Mick's comment, as I read it.

[Mick F]

As Rowan said.

The main crux of it all, is how the current QLD Government has been crapping on the entire time about how they're for supporting QLD jobs, yet they give a contract to a company who has next to nothing to do with QLD and let the QLD based company fall over as a result of losing such a big contract.

I have friends at Skytrans, so it's very sad to see it go like this.

Mick

[Paul F]

Originally Posted by Mick F

As Rowan said.

The main crux of it all, is how the current QLD Government has been crapping on the entire time about how they're for supporting QLD jobs, yet they give a contract to a company who has next to nothing to do with QLD and let the QLD based company fall over as a result of losing such a big contract.

I have friends at Skytrans, so it's very sad to see it go like this.

Mick

Yes it is sad to see ANY airline go under, but at the end of the day REX was able to offer a better service.