Coffs Harbour mayor says Virgin won’t return to airport for up to 18 months as more competition needed

City of Coffs Harbour mayor Nikki Williams has revealed Virgin Airlines won’t return to the city’s airport for up to 18 months, as residents remain concerned about the cost of flights from the area and a lack of industry competition.

What happened: There has long been the perception that airfares to Melbourne and Sydney from Coffs Harbour Airport are consistently dearer than other regional cities. 

In a late-November council meeting, Coffs Harbour Councillor Paul Amos sought to get to the bottom of the issue once and for all, seeking a public comment from airlines on the matter.

Amos asked: are the rumours true? And if so, why so dear?

• “Maybe our community is being a little unreasonable on our airlines,” Amos said. “Maybe our airlines could be looking after us a little better, but this is just getting some definition around that.”

Amos intended the motion to be a simple request to airlines to come out publicly, “something our community has been asking for for a good while”. 

However, the motion was lost 4-5 with many questions asked during the debate.

• “We understand the big thing we have to do now is get another competitor,” Mayor Nikki Williams said. “We need another major airline in Coffs Harbour.”

No competition, no savings: According to the mayor and councillors who spoke during the meeting, a lack of competition is the issue. 

Currently Coffs Harbour Airport has only three airlines.

• Qantas and REX fly to Sydney

• Qantas has a flight to Melbourne

• Link Airways can take you to Brisbane.

More competition the cure? During the meeting, Councillor George Cecato referred to a previous Chamber of Commerce meeting where he alleged QantasLink CEO Rachel Yangoyan "whispered" a lack of competition was the issue. 

• Cecato voted against the motion saying it would serve “no purpose”. 

• “But what can serve a purpose is for us to work together to increase competition. That's what is going to bring the price down,” he said.

• Cecato said the council should prioritise attracting more visitors to the area to increase competition and decrease prices.

What about Virgin? Mayor Williams noted Virgin, which used to operate out of Coffs Harbour airport, would not be able to return for another 12 to 18 months.

Williams spoke of the pandemic causing Virgin to go into temporary administration.

• “What they did was downgrade their fleet, and they downgraded their routes… they removed a lot of regional routes,” Mayor Williams said. 

• “One of the issues now is that they have had another injection of finances and they are trying to get back on their feet. But one of the problems is that flight fleet aircraft coming out of Boeing are taking a long time. So we've got around about a year to 18 months before they can get enough aircraft to open up another regional route. So that's the big problem.”

Losing airlines: The council took over the airport lease around COVID-19. 

“We used to have Tiger, we had Virgin, we had Qantas,” Williams said.

“Tiger folded so we don't have them anymore, Virgin came back for a short minute then went into temporary administration. Again, we don't have them anymore. That's left us with just Qantas and obviously Rex as well, which has a smaller capacity, not a big enough capacity, for us.

“That has really left Qantas as our really only competitor.”

Councillor Cath Fowler also offered insight during the debate with past experience in the travel industry.

• “It's about competition, demand, route economics, fleet availability and national networking planning,” Fowler said.

Lease not the issue: The mayor took the opportunity to address “the noise” around the lease of the airport being the reason our flight prices are more expensive, “which is not true.”

• City of Coffs Harbour confirmed in a staff report that flight pricing is determined by the airline carriers and not by the operator of the airport. 

Williams expressed the desire for “factual information” to get out to community members so people stop attacking the airport for something that's not their fault. “They're very important partners.”

What has been done: The mayor assured councillors much had been done to address the undeniable issue.

• “We all know that there's a problem with flights. We absolutely all know that”.

“Myself, our city, our economic development team, as well as the airport, as well as the Chamber of Commerce, have thrown absolutely everything short of the kitchen sink at this for the last 12 months,” Williams said, noting getting new A220s on the Melbourne and Sydney routes as well as extra A220s over the Christmas period – which brought pricing down a little bit.

What next: Council has agreed to seek commentary from airline carriers on relative pricing with other regional destinations.

Thumbnail image credit: Coffs Harbour Airport Facebook page.