Nexus Airlines hopeful for expansion following first year of travel service

Nexus Airlines says it hopes to expand after celebrating one year of service, with a quarter of all its passengers starting their journeys in Geraldton.

The airline took to the skies in mid-2023 following calls for a locally based aviation market.

Since the first flight, which flew passengers from Geraldton to Karratha, more than 76,000 people have boarded Nexus flights.

Of those, 18,500 started their journeys in Geraldton.

Managing director Michael McConachy said the Geraldton market was one of many the airline was looking to make an impression on.

“I think we need the support of all markets we fly into, and it’s all a measure of the number of people we can get to fly with us as to the longevity of the service,” he said.

“We’re getting good support and we need that to grow. We’re very excited to be here in Geraldton.

“With the local economy, business growth, mining and tourism, there’s a whole lot of things going on here, and we’re excited to be a part of that.”

A year on from starting the service, Mr McConachy said 80 full-time employees had been appointed across its bases in Geraldton and Broome.

The organisation has also looked to give back to the community, with its frequent flyer program providing more than $300,000 worth of support to more than 100 regional community organisations.

Nexus celebrated its anniversary by offering 1000 $1 return tickets when customers bought a one-way flight.

The sale began at 9am on Wednesday, and half the allocation sold within the first two hours, with the final ticket sold at 5.40pm.

Mr McConachy said the regional market had been very supportive during Nexus’ first year.

“The support that we’ve got from people in the regional communities along the route has been amazing,” he said.

“What I will say is it’s more challenging marketing into the city area, so any support we can get around that is good, because it’s really hard to market to two-and-a-half to three million people.

“In the regions, we are here. We’ve got the vehicles, we’ve got our friendly staff that live in the region, so people know what we’re doing, and they can choose when they use the service.”

Nexus competes with several regional airlines, as well as aviation giants Qantas and Virgin Australia.

However, Mr McConachy said the organisation was not looking to compete with the big companies, but rather to work with them to meet demand.

“When we started here and first started talking to the chamber and local government here about the inter-regional flight network, and the fact that we wanted to include Geraldton on the network, we’d already started running from Broome down to Port Hedland and Karratha,” he said.

“We wanted to expand that network with a bigger aircraft, and at that time there was a shortage of capacity between Geraldton and Perth, including some challenges around having the hardware available to meet the schedule that was there.

“We were asked to connect it through Geraldton through to Perth, and we did that.”