A Central Australian tourism operator is calling on the Federal Government to buy a fleet of disused A380 Boeings aircraft housed at an Alice Springs storage facility and to limit the size of the aeroplanes allowed to service Yulara airport.
Rex Neindorf operates the Alice Springs Reptile Centre and also runs a snake-catching service for the Alice Springs region.
He said that his tourism business had been 100 per cent effected by the global pandemic.
"We've gone from a very sound tourism position, especially after last year, to zero," Mr Neindorf said.
As the Northern Territory heads into the tourism peak season, Mr Neindorf, who once sat on the board of Tourism Central Australia, is wondering how his business will survive.
"We're going to need assistance over the summer and I'd probably say we'll need assistance right up to about June next year, just to get us through," he said.
Mr Neindorf is hoping that JobKeeper will be extended.
"We will need assistance to keep our staff on," he said.
"We'll need assistance to actually run the business, the bills and those sort of things which we won't be able to pay at all."
Flying in and out of Alice Springs is recognised by residents and tourism operators as being very expensive.
Sharing in prosperity
The route featured in the national Senate inquiry into regional airfares in 2018 and highlighted that it could be cheaper to drive 450 kilometres one way to the Ayers Rock Connellan Airport to access cheaper flights through budget airlines.
Mr Neindorf said that in the wake of COVID-19, the Ayers Rock Airport should be closed to the larger airlines.
"It would turn it back to an airport that could only take small planes, not large planes, so that way, all the major planes would have to fly through Alice Springs again," he said.
According to Mr Neindorf, that would have ripple effect not only on the self drive market but also on the bus companies too.
"That way, the whole of the southern part of Northern Territory shares in the prosperity," he said.
"Ever since the larger planes flew directly into Ayers' Rock Airport, that changed the landscape wholly. Now we become the satellite of them, not the other way around," he said.
Another suggestion to save the tourism industry in Central Australia is for the Federal Government to purchase either Virgin's mothballed aircraft, or the disused A380s housed at the Alice Springs Aircraft Storage facility.
"Then the Federal Government runs their own only airline again, and subsidise the cost of travel for Australians right throughout Australia," Mr Neindorf said.
"Imagine if you had a hundred dollar seats for travel in Australia?
"We'd lose out in the short term by buying the planes, but we'd win in the long term because we'd all be traveling and we'd all be spending and we'd be moving the economy."
