In Reply to: not being rude posted by occy on Thursday, 8. February 2007 at 13:12 Bali Time:
G'day Occy. It seems that we both misread and misinterpreted each others postings. My apologies. Please be assured that I have no connection or affiliation with either Skywest, Island Bound or any other travel agency. Please feel free to email me direct at any time and I will give you my details. There was one slight error in your original post though. Ansett never flew Port Hedland - Bali. Back then Garuda flew one week and Qantas the next. The Qantas flight was serviced by Ansett planes on wet hire. After Garuda dropped their Dc-9 service they handballed it to Merpati (its my party and I'll fly if I want to) who operated early model 737's on lease from Lufthansa. They dropped the service claiming that as Airservices Australia had pulled the fire services out of regional airports like Hedland and Karratha they could not comply with company operating procedures. The truth was of course that it was unviable with the passenger loads at that time and the company was in strife then just as they are now. The fleet was being drafted into higher density domestic services. One of the reasons for the low seat uptake was the lack of promotion and a very unreliable service. Hopes this helps to clarify the the cloudy areas of mis-interpretation.