Rex delays to 10 Oct

THE board at Rex Airlines has decided to continue the airline’s suspension of domestic flights and reduce regional services until at least 10 Oct, following moves by various state governments to extend travel restrictions.

The decision will also see staff furloughs extended until this time - for more details on Rex’s financials, see page 3.

REGIONAL Express Group Executive Chairman Lim Kim Hai believes the business has performed “relatively well” over the last 12 months, especially in light of the extremely challenging aviation climate the company has been operating in.

Hai made the comments yesterday while Regional Express Group, the parent of the Rex Airlines brand, handed down its full year financial results, which showed passenger revenue for the 12 months to 30 Jun fell by 41.3% to $125.2m on the back of domestic border restrictions.

The bulk of the passenger dropoff occurred in the second half of the financial year, with the first half delivering the group an after tax profit of $4.9 million before a resurgence in COVID cases in the country crunched flights.

The carrier delivered an overall after tax loss of $4.86 million for the latest period, encouragingly a vastly reduced deficit on the previous period which recorded a $19.4 million loss, helped along by an $87.42 million government grant which included JobKeeper payments.

Charter revenue also helped Rex mitigate its overall losses, contributing close to $31 million in revenue, while freight services also brought in $1.1 million.

Employee-related expenses led the list of costs during the year, accounting for $108 million of outgoings, while flight and port operations ($47.6 million), engineering and maintenance ($45.9 million) and fuel ($24.76 million) all factored heavily on the bottom line.

Hai said that looking forward the business was far from being out of the woods, citing the prospect of a likely continuation of travel shutdowns and border closures in the first half of the next financial year.

“The outlook for the year is highly uncertain,” he conceded.

“In these circumstances, Rex has performed relatively well in a full year of operations under the pandemic and I am pleased that we have managed to improve on our performance over the prior year which was only affected...for a third of the time.”