Rachael Cordina is never surprised when she runs into another doctor at Sydney Airport doing the early morning dash to regional NSW, mostly on a Regional Express flight.
The Sydney cardiologist heads to places like Dubbo and Port Macquarie once a month to run outreach clinics for patients with rare congenital heart problems and says airline Rex, which went into voluntary administration on Tuesday, is critical to the provision of health services across Australia.
Cardiologist Rachael Cordina has set up clinics for congenital heart disease in regional areas like Dubbo and uses Rex to fly out to them once a month.Credit: James Brickwood
“A whole bunch of different specialties use these services to deliver healthcare to people all over the country,” she said.
“The patients are so grateful. Not a clinic goes by that we don’t get a card, or a bag of presents or someone saying ‘Thank you so much for coming out here and making the effort’.”
The future of Rex is up in the air after the airline called in administrators EY. It has cancelled all flights between capital cities but is still flying regional routes while EY studies the business and considers how to restructure it.
About 360 of 2000 Rex employees have been stood down so far, with more than 600 jobs at risk if the airline is forced to ground its regional operations in addition to its major routes.
Cordina said while Qantas also serviced some towns she visited, the Rex timetables allowed her to fly in and out in a day, meaning she could get back to Sydney to see her family and also did not have to lose any work hours travelling.
“If you need to stay overnight at all these places, it’s just not feasible to run all these clinics,” she said. “Having affordable regional air travel is essential to getting specialists to deliver healthcare.”
Rex has pared back its regional offerings over the past two years, blaming a shortage of pilots and engineers, while also pushing into capital city routes like Sydney-to-Adelaide.
Ballina and Armidale have lost their Rex flights completely, while places like Wagga Wagga, Broken Hill, Orange, Parkes and Coffs Harbour have had their services cut.
Regional communities face paying the price for Rex’s failed effort to push into capital cities, National Rural Health Alliance chief executive Susi Tegen said.
Kelly and Angus Whyte at Wyndham Station, near Wentworth.Credit: Supplie
“When markets fail, the government needs to step in,” she said, pointing out that many regional, rural and remote communities relied on Rex to fly workers into town, and to take patients to the city for treatments.
“The reason the larger airlines don’t run to many of these places is because there is not much money in it.”
Community leaders say Rex is the only airline to service some airports and provides healthy competition with Qantas on other routes.
“If Rex pulled out tomorrow, I’m not sure there would be someone else who could fill that void easily,” Dubbo mayor and chair of Regional Cities NSW Mathew Dickerson said.
“People are choosing to live in regional areas now ... and those people need to be able to access Sydney for a whole range of reasons.”
Wentworth farmer Angus Whyte, who chairs the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine community reference group, said Rex provided a lifeline to regional communities.
“If that means the government needs to provide subsidies to continue it, then I think they really need to look at it because it’s bloody crucial,” he said. “We’ll be left with Qantas on their own – a monopoly. How good is that?”
Director of ophthalmology at Broken Hill Hospital Ashish Agar said his team of 10 specialists took it in turns to travel to Broken Hill from Sydney and Adelaide most weeks and relied on Rex.
Ophthalmologist Ashish Agar at work in Broken Hill.
“Broken Hill, like many remote places, has a very heavy dependence on remote specialists who fly in and fly out, and without them the service stops, and the only people to suffer in the end will be our patients,” he said.
“This is an absolute red-line, critical infrastructure issue. From a medical perspective, this is a service that cannot be allowed to fail.”
Regional Australia Institute chief executive Liz Ritchie said aviation is a vital service for the almost 10 million people who lived in regional Australia.
“It is imperative regional Australia has access to aviation services that are regular, affordable and consistent,” she said.
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