Days after agreeing a billion-dollar deal for state-of-the-art aircraft with Airbus, Qantas Airways announced that it had made a bid for the remaining 80% of Alliance Aviation, a company specializing in charters and wet-lease.
Qantas has already owned 20% of the Australian company since 2019 and this time intends to pay around $443 million for full control of Alliance – the deal will be voted by shareholders and reviewes bythe country’s antitrust agency.
Alliance is already an important partner of Australia’s largest carrier. Its Embraer E190 jets are used by QantasLink to operate on shorter routes and thus free up Boeing 737s to destinations with higher demand.
Alliance’s fleet currently has 63 aircraft, 20 of which are E190s (plus another 12 pending delivery), four Fokker 50 turboprops and 39 Fokker 100 and 70, of which it is the largest operator in the world.
The Dutch aircraft, whose manufacturer went bankrupt in 1997, is used on charter flights contracted by mining companies in Australia.
“Alliance’s fleet of Fokker aircraft are perfect for efficiently serving resources customers in WA and Queensland. They also have a big inventory of spare parts that would significantly extend the practical life of a combined fleet of around almost 70 Fokkers,” said Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce.
Regarding the E190s, Joyce stated that “We’ve opened up several new passenger routes using up to 18 of Alliance’s E190s, so bringing all 33 of these aircraft, plus their crews, into the Qantas Group would really expand what we could achieve.”
