The founder of Zinc Aviation has set out his blueprint to conquer the notoriously difficult Australian airline market using ultra-low-cost carrier Ryanair as its base model.
Former Qantas executive Peter Kelly is looking to secure around $140 million to get the startup off the ground and is confident he has the formula to overcome the challenges that have seen previous airlines fail in Australia.
According to Australia’s Financial Review, Kelly wants to model the airline on Ryanair and base Zinc’s efficiency on “sweating the assets and running the planes for 12 hours a day minimum”.
Zinc’s website describes the opening of Western Sydney International Airport (WSI) later this year as a “once-in-a-generation structural shift in Australian domestic aviation” and one that it plans to “exploit”
Kelly believes he understands why previous Australian airlines such as Bonza and Rex have failed, describing their demise as “predictable”.
“The business models were flawed from inception[…] Structural slot and gate constraints of SYD. Structural cost disadvantage. Undercapitalization. The wrong aircraft. The wrong routes. The wrong moment,” said the Zinc website. “Zinc has been engineered so that none of those reasons apply”.
Zinc says that a “single congested, curfewed, slot-constrained airport in Sydney” has made it “functionally impossible for a new entrant to build a genuinely competitive cost base”.
The startup claims that the “incumbents” have been “protected” by the “scarcity of infrastructure”.
“For the first time, a new domestic airline can access the Sydney market without the constraints that have defined – and defeated – every previous challenger. Zinc has been designed specifically for this moment. It would not exist without it,” said the startup.
Kelly plans to operate a single fleet type using the Airbus A321neo with a focus on high frequency routes between WSI, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane.
According to the Financial Review, Kelly is planning to secure finance to pay for aircraft deposits and fund its operations.