Recovery across the Regions: How have different sectors performed over the last 2.5 years

Transcript

Hans Mitterlechner:May I introduce my panel up on the stage? I have 3 gentlemen coming up, starting with Nick Politis. Is Politis the right pronunciation?

Salomon Kloppers:Yes.

Hans Mitterlechner:He's Team Leader of Airport Operations at Albury Airport. He spent 15 years before that as an officer with the Australian Army, with deployments to both Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea. In his about 2 years at Albury Airport, he has seen the addition— introduction, sorry, of 3 new routes, and he's currently leading a strategic review into the airport development. Please have a seat. Salomon Kloppers is next. Salomon is the manager of Emerald Airport. In addition to that, he does a couple of other things for the Central Highlands Regional Council. such as property and land sales and the sale yard. He worked in the private, in the non-for-profit, and local government sectors, and his passion is about airport finance and how to keep airports sustainable and profitable. And last but not least is David Nye. David Nye is the Head of Aviation Business Development at North Queensland Airports. Managing both Cairns and Mackay. He has worked in various commercial and operational roles in the UK, in Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia. Before joining NTA— sorry, NQA— he worked for roles at Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, and also Newcastle Airport. What we talk about is titled, you know, Recovery Across the Regions. As you said, Chris, this conference is very much about recovery, and we keep with the theme. I want to ask all of you how you have seen that. These gentlemen are chosen for a reason. David represents very much a leisure-focused airport with Cairns. Salomon, you are more on the resources side, and I would call your airport, Nick, like a mixed business airport.

David Nye:Emerald Airport.

Hans Mitterlechner:Emerald, you serve not all of them, but some of them, so you can give us some aspect at all. What I want to talk about is the good, the bad, and the ugly, maybe in a reverse order to make it more positive. What was the ugly aspect of the last 2 and a half years? Can I ask every single one of you, starting with you, David?

David Nye:Yeah, sure. Clearly, the ugly part was around March 2020, when, you know, the pandemic first hit and the reality came to us in our industry. We'd obviously been watching it from afar, and, you know, around that time when aviation pretty much closed down for a period of time. That coincided with, I guess, the loss of Tiger, which was, which was on its way, but also, you know, Virgin disappearing as well. And I think the uncertainty around, you know, would we see Virgin again? And to your point earlier, what would that do with competition? How long was the, you know, the aviation industry going to be affected by this? There's just the uncertainty around all of that. At that time, a lot of concerns obviously within all of our organizations. I think everybody in the room around, around future jobs, you know, how long would this go on for? So it was a pretty ugly time built around that, that uncertainty. In terms of, in terms of bad, border closures were clearly bad. A lot of people would say they were, they were ugly. It was close to being ugly. But I say bad because when the borders were open, Uh, in, in Cairns, we, we did reasonably well. Clearly not at the levels that we, we would have pre-pandemic, but, uh, um, you know, there were opportunities there. We saw the airlines deploy wide-body aircraft into Cairns on that domestic market. So when the domestic market started to recover and was able to recover with, uh, with border openings, we did pretty well in that, in that space. Um, In terms of good?

Hans Mitterlechner:Keep the goods up your sleeve. The good kind of, you know, we want to end maybe on a positive note. I didn't achieve this earlier, so maybe now I can. Now, Nick, you, you joined the airport in the middle of the ugly period, didn't you? When exactly did you join Albury?

Nick Politis:I joined on the 13th of July there, Hans, and that was the first day that they actually raised the borders between New South Wales and Victoria. And it was, um, interesting enough, moving from Canberra to Albury, or to Wodonga at that stage. I was on the other side of the border, so we moved for the whole region— the whole reason to move to the regions, have a large little bit of land, a big house, and only 15 minutes to work or 5 minutes to drop the kids off. Unfortunately, that turned into about a 45 to an hour drive to get to work as we had to go through the checkpoints. At the same time, that was the point where the aviation industry was really hurting, and that was probably the ugliest piece. In terms of the bad, We, we got to see what aviation looked like as we saw a recovery piece. And then September '21, um, in addition to also the regulatory changes and upgrading our enhanced— to enhanced screening, we thought we're on a flight path. Then September '21 with the, uh, Omicron variant, uh, then saw probably our worst period for, uh, aviation activity in terms of, um, for Albury. We will drop down to 46 flights for that entire month, which was a total passenger number of about 200. It was a very quiet terminal for a terminal that was designed for 300,000 passengers. But in terms of the good, we took advantage of the times we were quiet and were really supported well by our airline partners to be connected. And that's where we're at right now. We're connected through, fortunately, QantasLink, who have done a fantastic job for us to connect us to 4 capital cities and maintaining that connectivity to Melbourne, and also with Regional Express, who have committed their Sydney service. So we've been very fortunate. So we're right at this good part right now and just looking at our growth path.

Hans Mitterlechner:We got some good already, but it's a good story indeed, isn't it? I mean, many more markets for you. That is quite outstanding. Now, Salomon, do me a favor. Ugly and bad, and then we talk to Chris.

Salomon Kloppers:That's all good. First of all, thanks for having me out here.

Hans Mitterlechner:Anytime.

Salomon Kloppers:Just a bit of background about my airport. Local government-owned. Before the storm hit, we did about 210,000 passengers a year. In the months after the borders came down, We only did about 4,500 passengers. Um, the ugly was that there's 2 things that stuck in my mind. Some of the— in the early days, we had to make some really difficult staffing decisions. And in a small town, you know, you know the children of the people that you make those decisions about. And those were really very, very tough. Um, the other more strategic issue, I guess, is that we've been talking a lot in this conference the last 2 days about having bodies to actually do the work. My concern is actually more long-term. There is a potential, I guess, negative perception that might have been reinforced. We put people onto split shifts. You know, they got paid by the hour. Work was very— it was not something you could bank on. And our worry is that especially out in the regions when you have competing agriculture resources, Yes. Uh, when a, when a youngster leaves school and he's got to decide whether he comes for long-term career, invest in aviation, or go to one of the other markets, that he would not choose us. From a bad point of view, I guess the unclear and sometimes changing rules around health was very difficult, and what it did was it pitted us against our customers sometimes. You know, masks today, no masks tomorrow. You can— you could have flown this morning when you checked in, and then at 9 AM there is— as an example, last year, August, in the middle of a Saturday, there came out a message from the state that if you were in certain places the previous day, you had to go back to them and you can't leave them. So, which, which really made it very difficult for us as infrastructure managers, but also the airlines. And we were, we were obviously kind of caught, caught in the middle of that. From an airport business point of view, yes, we lost certain providers, and that was, that was difficult also, especially seeing as local government and local government airports did not have access to either JobKeeper And if you were, in a funny twist of fate, well managed, you did not have access to support grants. As an example, the SARA grant did not apply to you if you were financially well managed. So it was really a mixed bag for us between ugly and bad.

Hans Mitterlechner:Thank you. Look, I have a friend, personal friend, who was a director at Adelaide Airport, and the rules were changed for him in mid-flight. He was coming from Sydney to Adelaide, And it was actually turned around once he arrived here because something has changed in the meantime, which is, you know, pathetic and also very, very annoying, isn't it? Chris, I mean, you told us about your kind of, you know, living through the ugly and bad. I mean, for you it was a huge opportunity. I mean, that's what you told us and shared with us, right?

Chris Hine:Yeah, and that's probably the good. Well, that and the fact that we survived and we've kept so many of our fantastic staff, as I said. I suppose realistically, um, you know, our, our bad and ugly is not dissimilar to everyone else's. Fundamentally, the, the bad and the ugly for us was the fact that we, we needed to survive as a business. And I think we all took advantage in our own ways of the various, um, government support that was provided. And I think, you know, we're very thankful of that as a business because we're still here. And I think every airline obviously is, you know, fundamentally we wouldn't be here. Um, We'd all having to be starting again. But the real bad and the ugly for us was the effect that it had on our staff, and the fact that we really, really needed to look after them and the, the, the situations that we, we knew that they were in. There was obviously opportunities through JobKeeper, but, you know, we all know, I think, that that wasn't necessarily going to, um, solve all ills.

David Nye:Yeah.

Chris Hine:So that was the, the real ugly for us, is that sense that Yes, we could survive as a business financially, but if we lost those people, we wouldn't be the same company.

Hans Mitterlechner:Right.

Chris Hine:So we really— that played on our mind the whole way through. And I think probably looking back, the difficult part of it was none of us ever knew when it was going to end. We can look back on it now, we can sort of bookend it and say it went from there to there, but at the time, we never knew. You got up every day and you just looked for the ticker tape on the bottom of the ABC News to see what the text had changed to. It was just always there. There's always some crisis. And I think the— I know I did, and I think we all probably got a lesson in federation. And, you know, I sort of called ourselves the un-United States of Australia for years because we rapidly learnt how this country was, as I said, federated, and the fact that the powers lie with the states. And albeit, you know, we've got a lot of our network that's intrastate, It affected us, and we would do things one day and then something else would change and the border would shut. And that, that was affecting all parts of our business, particularly parts of our business that had to stay operating.

Hans Mitterlechner:Right.

Chris Hine:So the ambulance business, and to some extent our flight training academies were able to stay operating because we were seen as an essential service, plus we didn't present great risk. So there was— that was really the, the ugly for us, as I said, is, is Making sure that our company was there at the end, not just the financial business.

Hans Mitterlechner:The good. Let's be positive for a while before we look into what can we learn from all it. David, tell me.

David Nye:I think the good aligns with the slide, I think, that Jane showed earlier for us, was the opportunity to grow our domestic network, to grow our domestic footprint. These opportunities came around. that maybe wouldn't pre-pandemic because fleet was utilized well with all the airlines. But all of a sudden there was some spare capacity around.

Hans Mitterlechner:Those markets were open, like Sunny Coast to Cairns, right?

David Nye:Yeah, so we, we had the Sunshine Coast to Cairns service which wasn't there previously. The Qantas Group operated service and still operates service to Newcastle with Jetstar, Canberra with, with Qantas as well. And Virgin has got a bigger market in terms of destinations out of Cairns than they've ever had pre-pandemic. So, you know, those were the opportunities. That was the good that came out of that. And as I said before, we also saw, you know, wide-body services coming into the, into the region, you know, 787s operating domestically from Melbourne to Cairns because there was no international Right.

Chris Hine:Use for them.

David Nye:So therefore Jetstar were operating there, and that was critical obviously for our stakeholders in terms of our tourism business because, you know, air access, you know, the tyranny of distance, air access is key. You know, there is no drive market for Cairns. So whilst, you know, Queensland was open within for intrastate traffic, you know, to get to Cairns you need air services.

Hans Mitterlechner:It's like an island.

David Nye:Therefore, getting those services up from Brisbane, and Brisbane-Cairns was well documented as being the busiest route in Australia for a period of 6 months or so. Getting that capacity back in and our market being able to accept them was the good that came out of that.

Hans Mitterlechner:In both your cases, Nick and David, it was rapid recovery of the domestic market, I have to say, in your case, David. And also some new routes. That was the good, basically.

David Nye:Yeah, I mean, you know, it's been a roller coaster, obviously, but, you know, unlike a lot of other airports, we did have that, that foundation or that core of business. You look at an airport like the Gold Coast, for example, who literally had— even though Queensland was open to Queensland, was still essentially closed because, you know, everybody from Southeast Queensland can drive to the Gold Coast, whereas Cairns, they can't. So, so that was, yeah, that was an outcome which was critical for the survival of the tourism industry in our region, and obviously for us as an airport to make sure that we had those essential services transferring through. The support that we had working collaboratively with the airlines was essential for that to happen.

Hans Mitterlechner:In the world of Central Queensland serving the resources industry mostly, Emerald Airport, what are your good takeaways?

Salomon Kloppers:I'm not trying to be controversial, but COVID was probably one of the best things that could have happened to us. Especially from a management point of view. Local government airports are not run, as an example, such as David's airport. They're run by elected officials. Those elected officials are risk-averse to the extreme, as a community we want them to be. So when you approach those elected officials with with requests as you would normally in a commercial business. You know, they take a different lens on it. From that point of view, COVID was very good for us. The first thing it did was it created that heat in our system, and I know that there's a number of other ports here and not here in which had the same, the same benefit, and they were much more open to listen because they had to. Either we find ways to run efficiently and effectively and sustainably, or ratepayers must pay. There's only 2 people that pay at an airport, either the user or the ratepayer for a regional airport. So, um, they were much more open to proposals of cost restructure, and sometimes those involved people, processes, and systems. The other thing that it did for us was that it smashed the narrative, and I'll give a bit more detail here just now, but it smashed the narrative at a number of ports that destination, regional destination ports have got no market power. As an example, so we had just before the veil came down, we had about 32, 36 flights a week. Um, the veil came down, the hammer came down, and we went to basically zero And within a week or two, we actually had more flights because the resource companies, the fruit growers, those sorts of— the reason why people fly in regional Australia, not tourism, of course, those reasons kicked in and we had more passengers. Sorry, not more passengers, more flights. And what that did was to especially our boards It proved that when we sometimes get— with the greatest respect to airlines, sometimes airports get really interesting requests from airlines, and it's very difficult to motivate against those where those are maybe not in the best interest of the airport because they come with a narrative that says, you know, you are really marginal. Um, We make almost no money out of this. We fly because of you. Those sorts of narratives, very diff— difficult to motivate the price increase against sustained, and sometimes rightly so, advocacy against it. And what it helped us to do was to, in numbers, show that our routes have value. People fly for different reasons. And granted, at the time it might have been medical, it might have been It might have been industry-based. The other thing that it did for us very well was that it brought a number of airports a lot closer to— especially local government airports that see themselves as infrastructure managers— much closer to their markets. As an example, while we were theoretically still housebound, we flew in international flights into Emerald for fruit pickers. So that relationship now, or prior to COVID, was with the airlines. We saw people coming in, we had no idea where they were going. But because of COVID we could make those connections with them and they could make it with us so that we support each other. And that goes in our market, as an example, from fruit pickers in our area, the resource people, the The agriculture, the graziers, those sorts of— so that was great for us. And if I can add one more, from a strategic point of view, I think that one of the biggest benefits was that for a number of airport operators, talking again about local government, it showed that there's a difference between strategic business management and airport operational management. When we sometimes employ in our sector, it's about money, it's about what can do the job. There's very little— we've infrequently, especially government, employ with a little bit of gap on the top. Airports that had that, where someone had another skill, where someone had maybe a different kind of approach approach than just merely operational management, those actually did very well. Those went into delivery mode when everyone was closing down. Those planned when there were no plans of their previous plans they could deliver. Those were the guys that did well.

Chris Hine:Okay.

Hans Mitterlechner:So the essential nature of some airports shone through quite strongly. Would you replicate that, Chris, from your perspective? and talking about that some airports just needed your services and got them and that helped you through. I think in Albury there would be some similar kind of aspects that some of the traffic and capacity was needed to keep the town running, right? Chris, your perspective.

Chris Hine:Yeah, the good, you mean? Good. Well, obviously the good for us was to be able to be part of the, you know, the recovery. And I think I've said it, but the good for us as a business was this incredible opportunity we took in relation to the domestic operation. In relation to airports, we've long had a view that the benefit to the customer and moreover the benefit to those communities is a partnership between airlines and airports, because fundamentally one can't do— provide the product without the other.

Hans Mitterlechner:Yin-yang.

Chris Hine:We can't provide a flight to anywhere without an airport, and the airport can't really achieve much without flights. So we've seen some incredible support. In actual fact, Adelaide is, is one that comes to mind that gave us terrific support when we launched the Melbourne-Adelaide service. Melbourne, much the same. So where— what we've found is that where airports and airlines can understand how they make up that product offering to the customer and enter into true partnerships and support one another, There's just more to be benefited from. I mean, we call it internally the Rex effect, and I think from, you know, perhaps Adelaide and Melbourne Airport's point of view, when Rex went in, unsurprisingly, we got pounced on by our competitors. The beneficiaries of that wasn't necessarily us initially, but it was certainly the airports and the travelling public. So, you know, we were happy to provide that sort of Rex effect. But it just reminded us just how important it was that airports and the airline works together and understands what it can do.

Hans Mitterlechner:Now, I talked about this before. 3 years ago, if I had given an outlook, I could have done this with a lot more gravitas and conviction. These days, and if I had said 3 years ago that we have a major worldwide health crisis around the corner, I would have been declared a blooming idiot, most likely. But these days, it's something that we all keep in our minds, and what can we do? better to prepare ourselves for something or something like what happened the last few years. I mean, we all know about the United States of Australia, and I couldn't agree more. I had to go back to Austria for a family emergency last year, and the way we were looked at is just brutal. We were like communists, basically. It was like Eastern Europe being re-established, basically, with closed borders and stuff. It was terrible. That we could do better in theory. Any more insights? Can I start with you, David? What can be done now structurally to prepare you better for the next disaster, so to speak?

David Nye:I think we've all learned a lot over that period of time, and it's just difficult to really plan for these things again, I think. In terms of from a government's perspective, all of the apps and all of the electronic means and things like that that we had to go through to exit the country and filling in forms and everything else just to travel between states. That's something which, you know, was clunky at the time, and nobody realized that it was going to be something that would go on for a period of time. So I think that there's, you know, lessons to be learned out of that in the event that should we ever have to go down that path again. I think one of the things that I guess has kind of hit home for us again in terms of our business in the aviation space that, uh, the pandemic brought home was, uh, the, the movement of international air freight on passenger aircraft. And when those passenger aircraft don't come, um, that there's, uh, there's difficulties in terms of, uh, getting exports out from, from, from your region. And, um, you know, that's, that's again part of the business that there's a consideration. Fortunately, IFAM was created to assist airlines to operate freight services in that space. But again, if there's a, you know, another sort of pandemic or an issue that comes along that all of a sudden passenger services have to, you know, have to be redistributed elsewhere or cancelled or whatever, that's part of our business that we really need to sort of focus on moving forward is how do we maintain some of those operations when there's a crisis that affects passenger movement. But not necessarily the air traffic.

Hans Mitterlechner:Nick, what about you? Any things you can do better to prepare for the unknown?

Nick Politis:And I'll reiterate what David said about, you just— it's uncertainty as well. And we've probably now certainty of when there is a pandemic or so, how we'll now respond. But I guess the thing about adversity is adversity takes an opportunity and it will always attack the unexpected. So how do you prepare for the unexpected is a challenge for us all. And things that we took on board about that was is an ability to have that diverse thinking. So if we about— if we miss out on our core business, what is our other opportunities to sustain ourselves until it gets back to that normal? And in terms for that, for ourselves particularly, we're quite fortunate for our cafe operations. That started feeding the community. It started fulfilling this. It started filling shelves in the local IGA so they could feed everyone else in the community because they weren't able to get supplies across the border or produce or pre-made meals across the border. So it's that thinking outside the box to sustain yourself until you get back to normal. So it is, it's how we start looking at our terms of when the unexpected occurs, what else can you do?

Hans Mitterlechner:In your particular case, Albury, which is really very close to the city, any ideas about revenue diversification, more property development, especially on the, if I picture it correctly, in the southwest kind of quadrant of your airfield?

David Nye:Absolutely.

Nick Politis:So property development was huge in that component, and also with the inland rail coming on board with, uh, for around Albury and in Australia as well, the opportunity to actually transit freight onto rail is another, another, uh, opportunity that we're looking at too. And diversifying as well, we also looked at, uh, storing cars and storage as well. We have a large area that facilitates storage, so that's another option we can do in terms of when productivity or an activity Australia-wide slows down, there's another way or another stream that we could do too.

Hans Mitterlechner:And Salomon, it's a different question for you. You're further out of town, your town is smaller than Albury-Wodonga, and you serve a different kind of industry. Any takeaway points for you, what you could do better, but you didn't have to make so much better because you actually went quite well through the whole thing, didn't you?

Salomon Kloppers:We increased our turnover over COVID increased our surplus and reduced our costs, so we didn't go, go that bad. I, I think that it's impossible for any of us to predict what the future will hold. So the best we can do is to say, what is the elements— what are the elements that would— that, that will prepare us for that? So the first one is good leadership, and in local, in local regional areas, There are good people there. We must make sure that the governance structures of our, especially our regional airports, can ensure that those people actually are attracted to aviation in those areas and end up at airports and airlines in regional areas. The second one is we don't know what the next one will be. We don't know how big it will be. The best we can do is to make sure that If we do have to dig into the silverware, there's enough offered there. In the meantime, our homework is to make sure that especially regional airports, and I'm not saying this is not true for capital city airports, but these airports are doing pretty well in this, remain financially viable, financially strong, their depreciation are actually funded. So that there's less dependency on grants. So depending on what grants, um, the fiscal environment in future does, um, it will impact us less. So that whether we have to go borrow, whether you have to mothball the joint for a little while, whether you've got to keep people on the books in future, we don't know what we'll have to do. So income diversification, and it all depends on the market. I mean, we've got income diversification also. But when the, when the shutdown came, all of these things moved in a, in a, in a very similar way. So if you don't know what's going to hit you, income diversification might not, might not really, really work. So it all depends. The only advice I can do is we need to be as strong as we can when it starts, and then we've got to have good leaders.

Hans Mitterlechner:Right, and that's a much more difficult question actually for an airline, I think, right? I mean, if you're grounded, more or less you're grounded. When September 11th happened, my ex-employee— there was one thing you can do— my ex-employee at United Airlines on September 12th retired 75 727-100s. 75 aircraft gone on the day after the World Trade Center was hit. There was one thing you could do when you have an old and written-down fleet. Qantas did something very similar with the 744 fleet.

Nick Politis:Right.

Hans Mitterlechner:And the old A380 story, we kind of, you know, heard all about that in the last few years, not only here but across the world. What, as an airline like Rex, what can you do to prepare yourself better for the unknown out there?

Chris Hine:Yeah, I mean, obviously the unknown unknown. I think, I think what, what Salomon said is right. Fundamentally, you just need to be a strong business, and I know that goes without saying, but you, you know, being a strong sustainable business will give you a really good start at weathering some sort of storm. I mean, to some extent, we were a little bit lucky, although it wasn't going to save us entirely, but we're a little bit lucky that we are a diversified group with Pellair now, the Cobham FIFO arm, and indeed the flight training academy.

Salomon Kloppers:Excuse me.

Chris Hine:And the fact that some of our regional network included some regulated routes, which were obviously able to be supported. But fundamentally, it is all about being a strong business so that you can at least try to better weather that financial impact.

Salomon Kloppers:Excuse me.

Chris Hine:But also, I guess what we learnt is you have to be a business that is nimble and you're prepared to accept change. You're prepared to question, how can we do something differently? And we should all do that every day. But I think I can think of countless examples through COVID where To some extent, we could have done the things we ended up doing 2 years earlier.

Salomon Kloppers:Yep.

Chris Hine:Um, and, you know, whilst I'm, I'm not going to promote the use of Teams, obviously, as an airline, but, you know, those sorts of things— um, I didn't even know what Teams was in November 2019 when the IT GM of one of our flying schools tried to induct me into it, and I paid no attention. And then 3 months later, I had to ring him and say, that meeting we had, what did you tell me? Um, so, you know, I should have paid— I could have actually adopted some things, and I said, I'm certainly not going to promote teams, um, publicly. Um, but I think we had to do so many things differently, and we had to just deal with the problem we were faced with and just cross out every possible option. And, and let's remember that we actually built a high-capacity AOC In the middle of COVID We had all sorts of restrictions. We, we had to almost overnight, for example, we shifted the location of our cabin evac assessment by the regulator. We had to suddenly shift it somewhere because this couldn't happen there and that couldn't happen there. And the things that we were doing as a business and individuals were doing really unique things to try and get us to that point where we could achieve a high-cap AOC still in the middle of the—

Hans Mitterlechner:Yep.

Chris Hine:lockdowns and state borders being closed and not being able to fly. So I think that's the big takeaway for us, is that that nimbleness that perhaps we had was really valuable for us, and we need to make sure that we maintain it.

Hans Mitterlechner:I think, Mervyn, we had—

David Nye:I think the fact that COVID went on so long and the various waves meant that every time a wave came along, we were actually better prepared. And so therefore, what we did in March 2020 was different to what we did in January this year. We actually learned as we went. As soon as something happened, we knew that, okay, this part of the organization, you work from home. This operational aspect, you're here, you're split into 2 teams, you do this shift, you do that shift, you don't talk to each other in between. Therefore, we've evolved, I guess, in terms of what that's—

Hans Mitterlechner:I think we all learned a couple of different things. Who, by show of hands, knew a year ago that Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet? I can't I'll raise my hand to that. I didn't. We had to learn all these different things. Look, we have 4 and a half minutes to go. Any questions from the audience? Does anyone want to ask my esteemed panelists anything? Then I keep asking questions. What about— we talked about this a couple of times today— demand development in the next 12 months? I think we talked about it. What about you 3, from your perspective up in North Queensland? And there is an aspect for you which is international, which is a little bit tricky, isn't it? Just give us a minute on that, please.

David Nye:Yeah, sure. International is a challenge. You know, the same things internationally as there are domestically— availability of crew, availability of fleet. And so, you know, we've seen capacity, you know, rise and fall as You know, we've been open, other markets such as Japan, such as parts of Asia have been slow to recover, so therefore airlines have been able to operate into Australia. But now that Asia will start to open up with Japan, etc., those airlines will maybe deploy some fleet there. You know, international is not a major part of our business, but it's obviously very important, and the issue for us is that with capacity going up and down It pushes, you know, our friendship with our duty-free shop, with our retailers in the international terminal that are dedicated to that. You know, the Bali flights with Jetstar that were in for 3 months and then for, again, fleet reasons, etc., they come out until December. So you're trying to get your business back onto, you know, firm footings. But, you know, internationally you're at the mercy of those challenges with the international airlines, the same as domestic.

Hans Mitterlechner:Where do you see the domestic market going? Will we go steady and kind of go back to CY19?

David Nye:Yeah, look, I mean, we're there already. We were at FY19 around May and July, and capacity was 110%. Then we obviously all saw what happened with capacity. It got reined back in and is down there at about 90% now. You know, we've seen that, we've seen that, that already. That will come back, and, and we're confident that, you know, FY23 and beyond, there'll be growth opportunities. We've obviously got new airlines, uh, or Rex expanding, new airline bonds are coming in. And what really excites us is the new aircraft technology in the next couple of years, you know, opportunities for growth domestically and internationally.

Hans Mitterlechner:Right.

David Nye:A321, Um, you know, Neo LR that, uh, is operating into Cairns at the moment from Jetstar. The XLR will be, you know, the next cab off the rank potentially. Uh, that's exciting. Like Jane, uh, said earlier, you know, it's, uh, it's an exciting future when you take all of those, all of those things coming in.

Hans Mitterlechner:Nick, what about Albury? What do you think about demand? Where is it going in the next 12 months?

Nick Politis:If anything like now, uh, Hans has shown us that demand is there. So we're at about 90 to 95% of our pre-COVID levels. And prices are a lot more as they were before for airfares. And we do still have the uncertainty. There's still COVID, there's still the restrictions, some restrictions in place. Um, there's uncertainty in the geopolitical stand as well. We're changing over monarchy from a queen to a king now as well. So there's all uncertainty, but still the demand is at 90%. So let's say once we get to a settle, I'm sure that will then exceed 110% or so. And we still don't know what Bonza will bring as well.

Hans Mitterlechner:And both of you are recipients of Bonza services, aren't you?

Nick Politis:Once they are, once they start. And I think it's, for us, demand is just going to grow and it'll be a fantastic opportunity for, particularly for Albury. And it demonstrates both Albury-Wodonga and our little wider region of 196 are keen to travel. They're tired of the road, they're done, they're done utilising the road. They want to, they want to see air travel, they want to see other parts of Australia, and they want the airlines to support them to fly.

Hans Mitterlechner:And Salomon, we have a very, very kind of solid base, which is just given by your location and so on. Are you going to be able to grow on that? Is there any, any prospects thereof?

Salomon Kloppers:I think, I think in the short term we would not be able to grow in it. The way in which our market works, um, actually raises the risk to growing. If we, as an example, introduce a new, a new route, we might see not just our current schedule, uh, contract, but actually prices increase on it because of the way that the The different underlying markets that Emerald work, and that's not too different to any other airport. I know we talk about our aviation sector, but it's not just about the aviation sector will do one thing, but individual markets will do a different thing. By us, we do have about 30, 45, or 30 or 40% resources, but We can't just describe that. There are particularly different mines in there that are in different stages of their lifecycle. It's a lot more complex than just to say, we'll do good or we do bad, but I think in the big picture, it won't change.

Hans Mitterlechner:Well, we're out of time. Hopefully, we'll meet again in Brisbane next year and this more positive outlook has materialized. Thank you very much for your participation.

Chris Hine:Thank you.

Nick Politis:Thanks, Hans.

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