Rex Airlines holds a special place in the heart of country Australia. What would we do without it?
“Some ignorant person from Sydney texted in and said we should all just catch the train,” my mum tells me over the phone. Her text about being out west, where the food is grown and the wine is produced, gets read out by Richard Glover on ABC Drive. “We need Rex to continue!” she pleads.
My mum has reason for her panic. Australia’s third-largest carrier, Rex Airlines, is suffering. After entering voluntary administration on Tuesday all flights between major airports have been grounded.
This is sad for people who choose to fly Rex between major cities. It is extremely sad for the 350 workers who were immediately stood down, with hundreds more to come. For those of us who take the Saab 340 planes to regional destinations, there has never been a better time to write of this airline’s importance to country folk. Especially after the rapid rise and fall of Bonza, Australia’s failed attempt at a budget, regional-focused airline.
I grew up in the NSW Riverina town of Griffith and have travelled to and from Sydney for years. With my family of six, with university friends and by myself, I have been on those winding country roads – the ones that feel like they could stretch on for ever – an incalculable amount of times.
Griffith is about 570 kilometres west of Sydney. It usually takes seven hours to drive, with a Maccas pitstop. There is an option of a 10-hour train ride, which used to include a two-hour layover in Cootamundra, but that only runs twice a week. Or there are infrequent, chockablock public or boarding school buses, which stop at every rural town with a post office and crumbling pub along the way.
On very special occasions, and for only one-and-a-half hours of travel time (pending delays), I board a white, orange and blue Rex plane.
This is why I don’t take the train. Flying with check-in baggage? Rex includes luggage in the price. Flying solo? You can ask for a single window seat before boarding. Sweet or savoury? Yes, free snacks and beverages are included in the ticket price. Need us to book you a taxi once you land in Griffith? Door-to-door service like no other. You’re also guaranteed, eight times out of 10, to sit next to someone you know on a Rex flight to Griffith. Chances are you know half the plane! Honestly, it’s like a mini home-town reunion on every flight.
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That’s on top of the Rex cabin crew being the loveliest of them all. When the ups and downs of expected turbulence makes you slightly question the mighty 36-seater aircraft, the crew are always there, ready and calm. They make you forget that some Rex flights have to land only 15 minutes out of Griffith to drop people off in Narrandera first – I thought this was a normal flight experience for years! And they have managed many circling planes that can’t land due to foggy conditions at Griffith’s tiny airport. In worst case scenarios the planes have to fly back to Sydney – even the prime minister’s plane struggled to land when he visited – but to them this is all in a day’s work.
Qualities aside, Rex was a big reason why I picked Sydney to call home, knowing that I could always reliably jump on a flight at the last minute to see parents, siblings, pets, grandparents and friends. You still can’t fly to any other city but Sydney from Griffith, and before QantasLink started flights in 2021, Rex was the only option.
My colleague Jordyn tells me a very similar experience being from Merimbula, a small coastal town on the New South Wales far south coast. When she moved an eight-hour drive away to Melbourne to study at university in 2014, she didn’t own a car for the first two years she lived there. Rex was crucial to get home to see her family.
She says for many Australians, Qantas holds a special place in their hearts and minds. But for many regional and rural Australians it’s Rex, not Qantas, that holds that space. Like me, she’s devastated that Rex may no longer be an option.
Rex’s motto is quite literally “Our Heart’s In The Country”. The words are on the side of most of its planes; they’ve even written a song about it. It has been flying our doctors and medical specialists weekly to Griffith for years. Without Rex, regional hospital systems probably would’ve collapsed.
And even if it is slightly more expensive than other options, Rex will always be my first choice, no matter where I am flying. People living regionally should always have that choice.
• Claire Keenan is a casual reporter for Guardian Australia based in Sydney
Chances are you know half the plane! Honestly, it’s like a mini home-town reunion on every flight
educational quality, they must.
In the past two years, some Australian universities have reported a significant increase in the number of cases of contract cheating that they have detected. More students are being caught because of investment in cheating detection. But, as a I said, this is at some universities, and certainly not all of them.
Nonetheless, the ability for the other universities to deny that there’s a problem has been undercut by the success of detection efforts in places like Macquarie University, Deakin University and the University of Southern Queensland.
Importantly, universities that have been slower to invest in efforts to detect and deter the practice should not despair at the cost. Only a handful of dedicated professional staff have been responsible for the bulk of increased contract cheating detection at the universities that are doing it well.
Word gets around among students when cheating is caught and penalised
And, many of the students who fail a course because they are caught cheating pay to do the course a second time in order to complete their degrees the right way, thus offsetting the cost of upholding the rules.
Some cheating can be prevented with more secure assessments than unsupervised online tests. Beyond this, universities can attenuate cheating further by detecting it, because word gets around among students when cheating is caught and penalised.
• Guy Curtis is associate professor at the School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia and an academic integrity expert