Fly Corporate's growing New England network

It's been interesting watching the growth of Canberra based airline Fly Corporate within New England.

Whereas most previous airline attempts have focused on the Sydney market, Fly Corporate has focused on the Brisbane linkage, progressively adding flights to Brisbane from Coffs Harbour, Armidale, Tamworth, Narrabri, Moree and Inverell. Within Queensland, they also added the Biloela (Thangool) service when Qantaslink pulled out, making Brisbane a key hub. Now the company has added Narrabri-Sydney to their route, marking their first Sydney connection.

There are a number of interesting features about Fly Corporate's growth within New England. Whereas there used to be connections between New England ports and Brisbane, they struggled to survive in the face of thin traffic and rising costs, including those imposed as a consequence of changing regulatory structures, ultimately closing. This had adverse effects. In Armidale, for example, it meant that Queensland students attending school or university did not have direct flight connections.

It seems the economics may have changed a little. It's always seemed to me that Brisbane rather than Sydney was a logical destination for many services, but it was one difficult to access because of uncertain connections. Now, once again, we have a Northern network to Brisbane.

It was also great to see Inverell again get an air service. This gives Inverell people a choice of Brisbane as opposed to an hour half drive to Armidale and then a flight to Sydney. In the days of East West Airlines, both Inverell and Glen Innes had Sydney connections.  

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