Rex Airlines collapse: Administrators tells passengers to stay away as it focuses on regional operations

The newly-appointed administrators of Rex Airlines have urged spurned customers to stay away after cancelling flights between major airports in a bid to keep servicing the bush. Administrator Sam Freeman has taken the unusual step of posting a video on social media to confirm the scrapping of Rex’s big city ambitions and assure regional route customers their services are “currently unaffected”. As administrators from Ernst & Young try to return the airline to its regional roots, Rex is continuing to operate and take bookings on its crucial services between Perth and Carnarvon, Monkey Mia, Albany and Esperance. It has 10 flights scheduled to and from Perth Airport to WA regional areas on Wednesday and those services are unaffected. But the recently-launched Rex services linking Perth to Adelaide and Melbourne have been abandoned, along with a variety of flights between State capitals and services to the Gold Coast and Coolangatta. Rex and the administrators have struck a deal with rival Virgin Australia to provide replacement seats for customers who had booked on its abandoned routes between major destinations. Qantas is also playing Good Samaritan, inviting affected Rex major airport customers to try to book on the same route with its Qantas or Jetstar brands. The domestic powerhouse told customers to call Qantas on 13 15 38 and Jetstar on 13 15 18 or go through the budget airline’s live chat. The Qantas offer is open until August 31 — 17 days longer than the Virgin offer. Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka urged customers who had been due to fly with Rex within 48 hours to call the customer service line on 13 67 89. She asked other affected customers to go to the airline’s website to complete a re-booking form. The Rex website revealed the scrapping of its services linking major airports and the plans to continue it regional services. It initially only referred in passing to an administration and provided links to email addresses at Ernst & Young. A tweet was posted on Rex’s Xaccount at 9.05pm on Tuesday night saying administrators had been appointed to the airline. Mr Freeman urged customers with tickets on the cancelled flights to contact Virgin Australia. “It’s important that the holders of affected tickets should not come to the airport for their flight until they have re-booked their flights through contacting Virgin,” Mr Freeman said. Mr Freeman said his administration was aimed at continuing Rex’s “long and proud history of servicing regional or remote communities across Australia”. Rex late Tuesday grounded its fleet of Boeing 737 jet aircraft that its share market-listed parent Regional Express Holdings began leasing in 2021 as part of its attempted expansion into busy metropolitan routes. The expansion was helped by debt funding from Hong Kong private equity player PAG and used aircraft leased from the Virgin administration triggered in 2020 by the COVID-19 crisis. Virgin Australia has reportedly agreed to lease three of those aircraft as its grapples with delays in the deliveries of new jets. PAG is likely central to any restructure of Rex given it struck a $150 million secured convertible note deal with Rex in early 2021 when its shares were trading at more than triple its recent prices. The PAG deal was linked directly to the airline’s now-abandoned major airport ambitions.