Regional Express (Rex) has dug its heels in ahead of crisis talks with Wagga council next Thursday.
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Council general manager Alan Eldridge will meet Singapore-based Rex chairman Lim Kim Hai next week in a bid to salvage the relationship.
The airline is maintaining council’s planned airport tax hike – worth an extra $760,000 a year – is “extortionist” and Rex will pull out of a $2.8 million deal to buy a trouble-plagued aircraft hangar unless council backs down.
Rex has confirmed it has begun crunching the numbers on walking away from Wagga.
Adelaide airport is firming as Rex’s most likely site to relocate its heavy maintenance base, which would spell unemployment for approximately 70 Wagga workers.
According to a spokeswoman, Rex already has a “much larger engineering hangar at Adelaide Airport and one solution could be to move all maintenance work there”.
Wagga MP Daryl Maguire has shrugged off calls to intervene, but suggested the state’s pricing watchdog – Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) – should be on standby to defuse the tense negotiations.
“If they can't get to an agreement within a reasonable time frame, I suggest IPART be engaged to break the deadlock,” Mr Maguire said.
Mr Maguire was effusive in his praise of Rex chairman Mr Lim, crediting the aviation mogul for embracing Wagga at a time when “regional Australia was facing the prospect of no airlines or very limited services”.
