Airnorth chief executive hints at route expansion as company’s inaugural Cairns to Alice flight lands
Red Centre residents could soon have more options travelling in and out of Alice, an airline’s chief executive has hinted, on the same day of an inaugural flight landing. Find out more.
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A delayed first flight didn’t dampened the mood of an inaugural flight arriving in the Red Centre, as the company behind the new route hints there could be more to come in the future.
On Monday afternoon, the first flight from Cairns to Alice Springs arrived 25 minutes late at the airport, but the good news is it was a full house of passengers disembarking from the flight.
Originally scheduled to land at 2.20pm, passengers got off the plane at 2.45pm.
Airnorth chief executive Daniel Bowden said “I don’t have an answer at the moment” when questioned as to why the flight was delayed.
His company will “continue to grow our roots prudently”, he said, but when asked if that meant more new routes, he confirmed a new aircraft was coming.
“We’ve got another jet that will be arriving around June and then we’ll look to deploy that aircraft,” he said.
“We’re looking at plans all over the network, but some of those are commercially sensitive and a lot of them relate to how much capacity we’ve actually got available to us.”
At the airport, a delegation of politicians and chief executives were on the tarmac to meet those getting off the plane.
Prior to coming to a stop, two fire trucks also created the traditional water fountain runway greeting for the inaugural flight to taxi through.
A welcome party also provided a welcome to country, and a mini party was held in the airport to mark the occasion.
Alice Springs Town Council Mayor Matt Paterson, who was at the airport for the flight’s landing, said the new route was “another opportunity” to help with liveability in the town.
“We need to get away on a holiday but also just as importantly it provides us an opportunity to expand our tourism and bring people back to Alice Springs,” he said.
“Hopefully we just get more bums on seats into Alice and it becomes more of a popular destination and therefore prices will go down.”
Also at the event was NT Treasurer Bill Yan, who said the new route provides an additional 30,000 seats per annum into Alice Springs.
The new route links with Airnorth’s Perth route – announced in March last year – meaning punters can now fly on to the West Australian capital through Alice from Cairns or vice versa.
Mr Bowden said his carrier has already carried “over 18,000 passengers to and from Perth to Alice Springs,” with new route giving a total of 70,000 seats in and out of Alice.
“Post Covid we’ve actually added over 50 per cent more seats in and out of the territory and I don’t think there’s any other airline that can hold that up and say the same thing,” he said.
Tourism Central Australia chair Patrick Bedford said tour operators were happy the reef has been reconnected to the rock after a the route was canned five years ago.
“It is so important to us reconnecting Cairns back to Alice Springs, but also showing confidence in the Alice Springs region and the future growth of aviation in this sector and bringing tourism back to our industry,” he said.
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