Commercial airline travel to regional, rural, and remote areas of Queensland is in a state of turbulence that will further exacerbate social and economic divides between the regions and metropolitan centres.
For years industry and rural community leaders have raised concerns around regional access to services, with advocacy efforts in the past year alone focusing on banking and healthcare. It's an unfortunate reality that issues of regional service delivery failures only seem to dominate the news cycle when they reach crisis point or impact metropolitan counterparts. Yet regional Queenslanders continue to deal with these frustrations day in and day out.
A case in point were recent news items detailing the horror stories of passengers travelling west from Cairns facing three-day delays and in another instance, a $4000 fare. The airline involved blamed the "challenging aviation environment", which is cold comfort to those affected, as well as their employers, families, and friends.
These are not isolated incidents and are symptomatic of a broader reduction in regional airline routes across Australia. This comes despite the emergence of new speciality budget airlines who promised to address this very issue. Bonza, for example, cancelled two of its Queensland routes within six months of launching last year.
These issues aren't just costly and inconvenient for individuals but hamstring the economic development and social strength of regional Queensland. High airline prices are impacting regional industries and communities across workforce attraction, retention, recruitment, and training. Not to mention the impact this has on regional tourism opportunities for many parts of the state, as well as access to specialist medical services and education.
Prohibitive costs are also reducing the number of times a year people are willing and able to visit distant family. This is no doubt compounding the mental distress that is disproportionately impacting regional Queenslanders.
Specialist medical treatment, as well as professional services, often requires the specialist to travel to regional clinics or offices. These are essential services that cannot afford to be delayed or cancelled, but nevertheless are.
All these examples are unacceptable. While a level of subsidised regional mental health and emergency response services from the government are appreciated, there is a far greater scope for service delivery enhancement that must be met for regional Queensland to truly thrive.
The last inquiry into regional, rural, and remote air route services concluded a full year before the COVID-19 pandemic, and its ensuing impacts on the aviation sector. Perhaps now is the time for a re-examination of the factors driving costs and undermining the feasibility of commercial air travel to regional Queensland. With around one-third of Australians living in regional, rural and remote locations, these inequities must be addressed.
